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Barcelona seeks loan to help pay players

07 July 2010 15:33 (UTC +04:00)

Baku - APA-Economics. Barcelona, the Spanish football giants whose players will make up the bulk of Spainâ€™s team in Wednesdayâ€™s World Cup semi-final against Germany, are seeking a â‚¬150m loan to help pay player and staff wages, Financial Times reported.

The move was announced by new Barcelona president Sandro Rosell who took up his post last week, on the clubâ€™s website.

â€œThe club isnâ€™t bankrupt. This week weâ€™ll have everything in place to impose a policy of austerity to be able to make savings in unnecessary areas and meet very important commitments such as paying the wages of our players, coaches and employeesâ€.

The credit request was sought by the previous Barcelona board, â€œknowing that there werenâ€™t sufficient resourcesâ€, Mr Rosell added. The difference in the new boardâ€™s loan negotiations was that their predecessors factored in an increase in the club membership fee, whereas Mr Rosell does not intend to demand that increase.

He also announced said the sale of one of the clubâ€™s players, Dmitro Chygrynskiy, for â‚¬15m, had been motivated by financial needs as well as football considerations.

Mr Rosell also said he was concerned about the clubâ€™s TV rights contract with Mediapro, which last month announced it was seeking bankruptcy protection over a dispute with a pay-TV company. The seven-year contract, worth â‚¬1bn, runs until 2013.

â€œWe have spoken to representatives of Mediapro about their situation because everyone believes that they are in receivership,â€ Mr Rosell said.

The clubâ€™s website reported the president saying he had been given assurances by Mediapro that the money would be paid. But the site said that unlike its rivals Real Madrid, Barcelona had only â€œa verbal guarantee of paymentâ€.

Barcelona is one of the biggest spending clubs in Europe, its members expecting successive club presidents to achieve success by attracting some of the worldâ€™s best players.

Like all European clubs, it faces greater scrutiny of its finances by Uefa, Europeâ€™s governing body, which is bringing in new rules tightening up on how much clubs can spend in relation to their income.

In May, Barcelona paid Valencia â‚¬40m for David Villa, the Spanish striker who is the leading scorer in the World Cup, and wants to bring Arsenalâ€™s highly-valued Cesc Fabregas to the Nou Camp.

Last week, the club claimed to be the worldâ€™s biggest sports team by revenues, saying sales for the 12 months to June 30 rose 16 per cent to â‚¬445.5m. It said net income was â‚¬9m.