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At some point you have to conclude that the employer is the problem (personally I think this should be your starting assumption), when they keep having the same issue with multiple different employees, independently of each other. Barcelona are once again complaining that their selfish employees are expecting the club to pay them the money that they agreed to pay them when they signed contracts with them.
The club have reportedly been caught out trying to wrangle some shady deals to get themselves out of their mess, and as has been the case so often in recent years, they’ve turned to pressuring the players that they paid extortionate money, in the hope that they can force them out of the club (or onto cheaper contracts) to fix the big financial hole they have dug themselves.
Incredible. Spanish radio claim Barcelona jointly set-up a holdings company to which it paid €150m of its own money to buy its own assets (to inflate value of sale). La Liga rejected it as not "new" money. Barça must now pay €37.5m tax on this payment.https://t.co/tCBQH64e3Z
— Colin Millar (@Millar_Colin) August 8, 2022
To make matters worse, there have been multiple incidents of fans abusing these players too, with Martin Braithwaite receiving a chorus of boos as he ran onto the pitch, and Frenkie de Jong having abuse hurled at him as he arrived at training. This stuff is really gross. The players are not at fault for the club’s atrocious management. Everyone has watched on as Barcelona have created endless financial crises for themselves, by spending stupid money, and then tried to claw themselves out of the crisis by undercutting and mistreating their players.
Martin Braithwaite getting booed for having the absolute audacity to receive the wage that it says on his contract. pic.twitter.com/o2vkI1wWrO
— Joe Crann (@YesWeCrann) August 9, 2022
It’s a shame that Barcelona have become such an atrocious club, because it did used to feel like they were the good guys (of all the super clubs, at least), and now they are very definitely the bad guys. I’ll be very disappointed, though not remotely surprised, if they find a way of manoeuvring out of this latest crisis. I’m sure any solution will involve treating players like greedy scum for having the audacity to expect their contracts to be fulfilled.
The Links
Paddy basically stole all the content that could have gone in today’s Daily Bee (and he even told us he was doing it), so I’m really working with scraps.
- Sergio Gomez to Man City is a done deal. He has a shot at being a part of the City squad this season, but there are also discussions about him potentially going on loan to Girona. (Fabrizio Romano)
- Borussia Dortmund must move players on if they are to pursue Callum Hudson-Odoi, and at the moment the young Englishman would prefer to stay in his home country (which is good news for Saints). (BILD)
- There’s been lots of glowing praise of Anthony Modeste, who appears to be someone that lots of players like, both as a player and a person. Nico Schlotterbeck had this to say about him: “He is a striker you very much don’t like to play against, whether in the air or on the ground”. (Ruhr Nachrichten)
The Daily Buzz
What do you make of Barcelona’s management over the last few seasons?
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