Barcelona: Barcelona’s efforts to offer Lionel Messi a new contract are detained because of La Liga’s financial control measures, club president Joan Laporta, said on Thursday after Argentine became a free agent.
Messi, who joined Barca aged 13 in September 2000, did not have the current contractual relationship with Catalans after the agreement ended on June 30 and while Laporta said the top scorer of the club would want to live, he added their efforts to tie it.
A new agreement must be in accordance with the league requirements.
“This goes well, he wants to stay and we do all the effort to make sure he does it.
But we have to balance it with the Financial Fair Play,” said Laporta to the Spanish radio station onda cero on Thursday.
“There are many choices and we contemplate the best for both parties.
But we want him to stay and so do he, we want to give him the most competitive team.” La Liga introduces financial control measures in 2013 set the maximum amount of money that can be spent every club to play the squad and coach staff every season, conditioned by their income.
Barca have the highest income in Soccer World according to the Deloitte money league this year, even though revenue fell 125 million euros last year due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the beginning of the 2019-20 Barca season was allocated with a maximum budget of 1.47 billion euros by La Liga which shrank to 733 million for the last campaign and is expected to fall further after the entire season without ticket sales and depressed transfer markets.
Messi has the most profitable contract in the sport of the world, according to the January report at El Mundo, and if Barca wants to get a new agreement for him through their lines to reduce their wage bills, which Laporta said last month the player on the salary “is not synchronous with the current market” ,