President Laporta Claims To Have Saved FC Barcelona From ‘Financial Ruin’ Through Salary Cuts, Blasts La Liga

FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta has blasted La Liga for how it is treating his club and made a huge claim about how much he has reduced its wage bill while also claiming to have saved Barca from ‘financial ruin’ in a press conference.

Laporta began speaking at the Catalans’ Auditori 1899 just past midday in Spain on Thursday afternoon. He began by noting that we are now midway through 2022/2023, with it also nearly two years since he and his board assumed control of the club by winning an election in 2021.

Laporta claimed that they “took a risk” by taking over. “It was a moment of maximum difficulty, but we have made courageous decisions that are taking the club on the right path.”

“At a sporting level, we have the Super Cup, which we won with a recital [against Real Madrid], we are in the Copa del Rey, in the Europa League… we want to win.

“The priority objective is La Liga, in which we are first with 53 points. We have a solid defence. We know that it is a team that is in a growth phase. We have strengthened the first team,” he added.

Though Barca are indeed on course to win their first Spanish top flight title since 2019, Laporta blasted the league headed by Javier Tebas, who has constantly thrown obstacles in their way such as making it difficult to register Gavi’s new contract.

“This causes the league to apply more restrictive rules to us,” Laporta noted, which means it is a “titanic effort” to register new players even through the pulling of economic levers.

“Every time we have overcome an obstacle, the league has changed the rule so that we do not do these operations again. This is a constant push and pull.”

“We will try to make the league make the rules more flexible and make it so that we can be competitive with other rivals. Fair play is more benevolent in other championships. For all this we cannot register players, due to the salary limit set by the league. We have adapted, but we will try to keep fighting,” Laporta vowed.

Another obstacle launched in Barca’s path by Tebas is the La Liga head claiming that Barca must shave €200mn ($214mn) from their wage bill ahead of 2023/2024.

According to Laporta, the wage bill has already been lowered by €100mn ($107mn) and he expects this to have dropped to €170mn ($183mn) by the summer.

“We’ve signed players for €215mn and sold for €141mn, we made a competitive team for €74mn,” Laporta explained.

“We’ve saved Barcelona from financial ruin, yes,” he also boasted.

Perhaps through player sales, with Ferran Torres and Eric Garcia prime candidates to be offloaded, Barca can reach Tebas’ demand.

Though as past events have shown, it wouldn’t be surprising if Tebas then puts another spanner in the works as he continues his war with Barca and Real Madrid over their desire to form a European Super League.