Can Barcelona actually afford Raphinha? - The Athletic 3/6/22
Phil Hay and Dermot Corrigan
Raphinha took a trip to Disneyland Korea last week and,
after keeping the relegation wolf from the door at Leeds United, it was a case
of off one rollercoaster and onto another.
We’re into the close season but football never stops and
where Raphinha is concerned, this summer promises to be quite a ride.
The Brazil squad were in South Korea to play a friendly —
where they emerged as 5-1 victors — and Raphinha’s international ascent has
been so steep that wherever Brazil go these days, he goes too. He is their
overnight success story. He took his leave from Leeds a fortnight ago with no
cast-iron guarantee that he would ever be back, his future hanging on
developments in the transfer market.
Leeds have spent the best part of a year fielding questions
about how long they can hope to retain the electric winger they signed from
French club Rennes at the start of the 2020-21 season.
They encounter the same questions about Kalvin Phillips but
there has long been a view that persuading the England midfielder to stay put
at Elland Road, at least in the short term, will be easier than pinning
Raphinha down.
As Leeds wrestled with relegation last season, only finally
fighting it off on the campaign’s final day, the general feeling was that the
25-year-old would gravitate towards bigger things once the summer transfer
window opened, moving to the level he is patently good enough to play at.
In that sense, Leeds staying up has changed very little.
They are sympathetic to Raphinha’s ambition and do not
intend to be unfair or obstructive if their valuation is met. They no longer
anticipate him accepting a new contract — something that appeared to be on the
cards midway through the season — and although Raphinha has not directly asked
for a transfer, it is no secret that he sees himself as a Champions League
footballer. The names of the clubs being linked with him prove that others see
him as a Champions League footballer too, and it already feels certain that a
fit Raphinha will be in the Brazil squad for the World Cup this November and
December.
All the same, survival as a Premier League club left Leeds
holding a helpful number of the cards.
Raphinha’s contract contains a relegation buy-out provision
that would have allowed him to leave for well below his market value had Leeds
gone down, and it is no coincidence that Barcelona’s interest in him
intensified in the period when Jesse Marsch’s side looked doomed. It was no
coincidence either that Manchester City’s attention regarding Phillips became
more formal and concerted as the odds on Leeds falling into the Championship
shortened sharply.
Relegation would have made Leeds vulnerable to low offers
and other clubs knew it.
As it is, they are under no pressure to consider cut-price
bids or allow third parties to dictate to them.
Raphinha has two years left on his deal and Leeds will be
conscious of the fact that, if he stays, his value will be considerably lower
in 12 months than it is now. But sources have indicated to The Athletic that it
is likely to take a bid of between £60 million and £70 million to get Raphinha
out of Elland Road — potentially four times what they paid for him less than
two years ago.
Barcelona are his prime suitors and the club where all the
noise about Raphinha has been coming from — the club who seemed destined to
sign him for many months.
But the question for Barcelona is a pointed one: Can they actually afford this deal?
Time was when the ownership in Catalonia could rattle off a
signing like Raphinha in any given window, when virtually no transfer target
was impossible. But Barcelona are a very different animal now, with debts of
more than £1 billion and strict controls on their recruitment and expenditure.
A club who were forced to part with their talisman Lionel
Messi on a free by La Liga’s rules last summer are no more able to flex their
muscles a year on, and they face a challenging window unless they can find new
streams of revenue or raise significant funds through player sales.
La Liga’s application of a tight salary cap at the Nou Camp,
far below the limits placed on their 2021-22 title and Champions League-winning
arch-rivals Real Madrid, have seriously limited Barcelona’s spending power.
Their situation was summed up this week by La Liga president
Javier Tebas discussing whether they were in any position to acquire Bayern
Munich’s wantaway striker Robert Lewandowski for a £25 million fee and annual
wages of around £17 million.
“Barca know what they have to do,” Tebas said. “They know
perfectly well our economic controls and their financial situation. I don’t
know if they will sell Frenkie de Jong, Pedri or Pepito Perez (a Barcelona-born
actor who died in the 1970s). They have to fill up their tank, which is empty.
As things stand, they cannot sign Lewandowski.”
Of course, the club’s hierarchy, including president Joan
Laporta, were unimpressed by those comments.
Laporta accused Tebas of “damaging Barcelona” by speaking
publicly about their recruitment. But it is true they have only limited
financial flexibility.
Barcelona have agreed to sign free agents Andreas
Christensen (from Chelsea) and Franck Kessie (AC Milan) but, as things stand,
do not have space under their salary cap to register them. Head coach Xavi also
wants Ousmane Dembele to sign a new contract but the forward has not accepted
any of the club’s offers and could depart for nothing with his existing deal
now up.
As Tebas said, before completing any new signings, Barcelona
need to load up their coffers again. Laporta and his fellow directors are
looking at several ways of doing that, including the possibility of belatedly
entering into La Liga’s controversial CVC deal. They have the option of selling
future TV rights to an investor and could raise additional cash by
relinquishing stakes in their BLM merchandising arm and Barca Studios
production firm.
Estimates set the potential earnings from those potential
agreements at more than £650 million, although much of it would have to go
towards paying off existing debts.
There is also a long list of players Barcelona would like to
move on, thereby creating additional wiggle room and freedom under the salary
cap. These include back-up goalkeeper Neto, defenders Sergino Dest, Samuel
Umtiti, Clement Lenglet and Oscar Mingueza, midfielders Miralem Pjanic and
Riqui Puig, and forwards Memphis Depay, Martin Braithwaite and Francisco
Trincao.
The complication is that finding willing buyers for some or
all of the surplus crowd will be difficult, not least because many of them are
on large salaries. This explains why they are open to the idea of selling De
Jong, linked heavily with Manchester United recently. Though the 25-year-old
Netherlands midfielder is seen as an asset, he is also a player Barcelona could
more easily use as collateral.
A clearer picture of where Barcelona stand should emerge
after an emergency general meeting on June 16 and the end of their financial
year two weeks later.
The priority for Laporta and the directors around him is to
build a competitive squad for next season and the players they want to sign for
that include Raphinha and Lewandowski. They are also keen on Manchester City’s
Bernardo Silva, Carlos Soler of Valencia, Sevilla’s Jules Kounde and two more
Chelsea players in Cesar Azpilicueta and Marcos Alonso.
While it is inconceivable that they will land all of those
names, they want to give themselves a fighting chance in the 2022-23 La Liga
after finishing as runners-up but 13 points adrift of champions Madrid last
month.
That Barcelona turned their attention to Raphinha in the
first place is no surprise.
His agent, Deco, was a star player for them in the early
years of this century and is very close to Laporta.
It was reported in February that Deco is effectively the
Catalan club’s chief scout in South America, the market where he picked up
Raphinha as a teenager at Avia, a club who have yo-yoed between Brazil’s top
two divisions over the past decade, before moves to Vitoria Guimaraes and
Sporting Lisbon in Portugal, then the switch to Rennes in the summer of 2019.
Perennial German champions Bayern have been touted as
another possible destination for the winger with Lewandowski pushing to leave
but they have made no contact with Leeds. Barcelona, on the other hand, opened
channels of communication a while ago but their interest has not ramped up in
the two weeks since the English season finished.
Those financial handcuffs mean Barcelona’s 2022-23 squad is
unlikely to be finalised until very late in the summer window.
The answer to the question of whether they can afford
Raphinha might be unclear for a while yet. Barcelona might try to dangle
surplus players in part-exchange, a way of cheapening any deal for them. But La
Liga’s salary-cap rules would make that process complicated as a set percentage
of money received would have to be spent servicing their debt.
Also, Leeds have pre-existing plans for the coming window
and might not be interested in a cash-plus-player proposal.
Survival on the last day of the Premier League season
averted an out-of-control summer at Elland Road.
With the 2022-23 calendar rejigged to accommodate a winter
World Cup, this off-season is so short that Leeds are due to begin pre-season
training in a matter of weeks.
At this juncture, there is a high likelihood that Raphinha
will be with them when they do, albeit after some extra time off to compensate
for international duty.
