Barcelona gambled on a 'virtuous circle' but that's been bent right out of shape while the rest of us laugh. twoht on a failed experiment.
Barcelona gambled on a ‘virtuous circle’ that’s been bent way out of shape by leversBy borrowing against future revenues, Barcelona are betting on a ‘virtuous circle’ which certainly hasn’t appeared in the Champions League.In the end, it was over before it even really began. A couple of hours before they kicked off their penultimate Champions League group match against Bayern Munich, Barcelona sat their players down to watch their own elimination from the competition.
Now the inquests will begin, but will there be enough introspection for Barcelona to get back to a position of health? Everything that has happened to the club over the last couple of years has indicated that they lack the self-awareness. This year the club’s policy has been to seek to create a ‘virtuous circle’ by spending big and reaping the rewards from doing so.
Robert Lewandowski made perfect sense as a ‘marquee’ signing, a beast of a striker with a goalscoring record among the best in Europe. But even that decision already feels reckless. Lewandowski was only a month shy of his 34th birthday when Barcelona bought him from Bayern, and he’ll be pushing 37 by the time his four-year contract ends. It’s been estimated that he alone will have cost the club close to €100m by the time it’s done.
Meanwhile, the costs just keep on piling up. Renovation of Camp Nou is expected to cost €1.5bn over the next 25 years. Its completion will increase the club’s commercial revenues, but for one season they’ll have to play at the Montjuic Stadium, which holds a significantly smaller number of people – 55,000, against Camp Nou’s 99,000 – and will again negatively impact on the club’s revenues.
And for all the high-falutin’ talk of ‘economic levers’, with the mental image they conjure of an actual lever in the boardroom which can be pulled at will to release endless €500 Euro notes from the ceiling, the fact is that they’ve mortgaged their future on a gamble of success in the present and that this gamble is failing.