Barcelona president Joan Laporta was back eating at his favourite restaurant on Thursday night, joined by Chelsea's new co-owner, Behdad Eghbali (the co-chairman of Clearlake Capital is part of the consortium that bought the Blues from Roman Abramovich, alongside Todd Boehly.) When Laporta came out and was bundled into the back of a van to avoid the media, all Egbhali would say was that the meal at Via Veneto had been very good. Barca's CEO, meanwhile, described the visit as "institutional," whatever that's supposed to mean. It wasn't very convincing and reporters didn't buy it; one asked if Eghbali was there to confirm Cesar Azpilicueta's move to Camp Nou, and the Chelsea captain wondered so too.
It was not just him left to wonder; there's also left-back Marcos Alonso. Centre-back Andreas Christensen had already turned up in Spain, clutching a piece of paper that proved that coming to Catalonia had always been his dream, now fulfilled after his Chelsea contract ran out. Written when he was little and in neat handwriting, it declared his intention to be a fodboldspiller who would play for FC Barcelona. He said he had told Alonso and Azpilicueta of his move, and hoped that they would soon join him. The day before, midfielder Franck Kessie had arrived after his contract expired at AC Milan, looking sharp in a blue suit.
News came a couple of days later of another, increased bid for Leeds United attacker Raphinha, with optimism that he might actually join Barcelona despite competition from other clubs who had placed bids above €60 million. And news on Robert Lewandowski, the transfer fee reportedly edging closer to €40m for the Bayern Munich forward. Laporta had openly talked about Man City's Bernardo Silva, too; Sevilla defender Jules Kounde was another one. And still the Ousmane Dembele story was going on, six months after they told him to leave the club and a week after he had officially become a free agent, his future no longer clear and no longer formally linked to FC Barcelona, either.
Then there was Frenkie de Jong. Barca had been negotiating his €85m transfer to Manchester United, trying to get him to go even when he didn't really want to, but now the president was saying he didn't intend to let the midfielder leave. It was heavily caveated, and not exactly a vow, but here he was saying that he would like the 25-year-old to stay.
How could Barcelona, a club reportedly €1.3 billion in debt, do this? How could they, with a salary limited set by LaLiga of €-144m, chase so many players and at such a cost? And why would the league let them? How can a club described by their own vice president as "clinically dead" when they took over from the regime that led them almost to ruin, with aspirations only to get out of the ward -- never mind the hospital -- sign all these players?
The short answer is that they can't. Kessie and Christensen were presented this week, but they can't be registered because Barcelona don't meet the league's financial fair play criteria. They are not within the salary limits LaLiga sets, in other words, and those budget deficits prevent their new players from formally joining the squad.
For now, anyway. They will eventually, or at least that's the aspiration and the expectation. Which is why "they can't" isn't really the answer, even if it's strictly speaking about the present. And even that may need a little explaining.
Indeed, judging by many reactions, it does need an explainer, even if a necessarily simplified one -- otherwise it gets very complex, very boring and we will be here forever. Nobody wants that.
So, beyond the obvious answer that no team ever signs all the players they pursue, still less all the players they are linked to, here are a few pointers as to how a club that appear unable to sign any players will end up signing players. Maybe even quite a lot of them, and maybe for quite a lot of money too.
First of all, there are different yet interrelated processes running in parallel here:
One is the general financial state of the club, something that always has to be balanced with the competitive state of the club in the short-, mid- and long-term.
Another is the ability of the club to hit budgetary targets, which is why there was a rush to bring in the first of the now-famous "economic levers" -- more of these in a minute -- before July 1.
The third is the ability of the club to fulfil the league's criteria to sign. And that's the one which, right now, is the most significant.
The limite salarial, LaLiga's equivalent of financial fair play, is the amount -- defined by the league after analysing the club's audited accounts -- that they are allowed to spend on the first team, basically made up of transfer fees, amortisations and wages. It is an over-simplification, but it is essentially a calculation of what the club can afford based on the income against outgoing. There are recommendations that salaries should not represent much more than 60% of a club's income, but the correlation is not as direct as that.
It is also -- and this is important -- applied prior to signings. This isn't like other financial controls, where a club that breaks the rules gets punished later on. If a club does not meet the criteria, they will simply not be able to sign a player. Registrations are done digitally with an app that will actually not allow you to click "Accept." And so a player you try to add just will not be added, and his registration will not be completed. The computer will say no. There are ways to move money around, defer payments and spread costs, of course -- remember the Arthur/Miralem Pjanic swap deal with Juventus, for example -- but that can't go on forever, and it only takes you so far.
