Barcelona have been dealt a blow in their hopes of registering Dani Olmo and Pau Victor in their squad for the second half of the 2024-25 season in La Liga, with the club’s court appeal for a precautionary registration measure rejected.
The club’s appeal for the two players’ registration was rejected by the commercial court 10 of Barcelona on Friday, December 27, meaning neither player is currently registered to play from January 1.
La Liga approved the registration of Olmo and Victor for the first half of the season only, giving Barca a temporary permit to use the players while they kept looking for fresh revenue streams before January. Their four-month allowances will expire on December 31 and major changes are yet to happen.
Barcelona have now filed a new appeal to the Juzgado de Primera Instancia (the magistrate court) which will be heard on December 30, one day ahead of the Tuesday deadline.
In a statement welcoming Friday’s verdict, La Liga said the outcome is based on the league’s “established budgetary balance rules implementing the powers conferred upon it by law.” The league stressed the importance of the rules being “applied in the same way to all clubs and thus avoiding potentially seriously altering the equal conditions of the competition rules.”
Barca announced a new sponsorship deal with Nike but this was insufficient to register the two players. The Athletic reported on December 10 that Barcelona were exploring the sale of VIP boxes at the newly refurbished Camp Nou in 20-year commitments in a move to register first-team squad players in January.
Sources close to Olmo, speaking anonymously due to the confidentiality of the process, have maintained a confidence that the situation would be resolved throughout and he remains committed to his boyhood club.
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Olmo, who joined from RB Leipzig in the summer for a fee in the region of €60million (£50m; $63m), has scored six goals in 15 appearances for Barcelona this season while Victor has two goals in 17 appearances, of which only two have been as a starter.
Barcelona’s struggles to meet La Liga’s salary limit had made it difficult for them to register new players in the summer but a resolution was found due to long-term injuries at the club.
If a club lose a player to injury for at least four months, La Liga rules allow them to allocate 80 per cent of that player’s salary in the club’s allowance to register another player. Ronald Araujo suffered a hamstring injury with Uruguay at the Copa America that required surgery and kept him out for five months.
The same was also true for long-term absentees Andreas Christensen, and later Marc-Andre Ter Stegen — allowing the wages of those players to be freed up.
Araujo’s injury gave the space for fellow defender Inigo Martinez to be registered for the entirety of 2024-25, while the salary space created by Christensen’s injury allowed Olmo to be registered for the first half of the season.
Araujo returned to action this month and Christensen is targeting a January return, while Ter Stegen is out for the season with a knee ligament injury, with Barcelona signing Wojciech Szczesny to provide cover for Inaki Pena.
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Barcelona’s financial situation has worsened by the delay in the construction work at the Camp Nou, with the club continuing to play at Montjuic. The club had been hoping to return to their home stadium this calendar year, but it is now not expected until February at the earliest and potentially not until the 2025-26 season.
For the 2023-24 season, it was estimated that playing away from Camp Nou would cost the club about €90million (£75m; $100m at current rates), taking into account lost revenue and money spent to get the ground match-ready.
In September, the price of the Camp Nou reconstruction project was projected to be €900m, with costs for the wider Espai Barca project — of which the stadium renovation is the most significant part — were put at €1.5billion. According to the official Espai Barca website, the project “involves remodelling all the facilities that Barcelona has in the Les Corts neighbourhood of Barcelona, and the Johan Cruyff Stadium at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper in Sant Joan Despi”.
(Top image: Jose Manuel Alvarez Rey/JAR Sport Images/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
