La Liga CEO ‘convinced’ Barcelona will resolve salary limit issues

La Liga announced the updated salary limits for the 2025-26 season for each club, following the summer transfer window. The major headline was again Barcelona, who suffered a drop of nearly 24% in their salary limit for January.

The main source of that change is due to the removal of their 30-year VIP seats lease, worth €100m, which auditors Crowe removed from their accounts following an audit in January. It saw their salary limit lowered from €463m to €351m.

Unsurprisingly, the gathered press were keen to find out more about their situation, and more to the point when they would be back within their salary limit, and as such, back in the so-called ‘1:1 spending rule’. La Liga CEO Javier Gomez said he had faith they would sort it out.

“I’m convinced that they will end up resolving it. Clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona, they are giants, but I think they’ll overcome it. They have to work on it, but they’ll do it. What’s happening is that they have the stadium closed, which means they are losing lots of money. We’re talking about €70-80m. Question is when is it going to happen. There’s obviously the VIP seats deal, which is worth €100m.”

Meanwhile La Liga President Javier Tebas, after rejecting the idea that La Liga’s salary limit regulations were overly strict, also weighed in on Barcelona’s situation. He was clear that La Liga were as much in the dark over when their VIP seats deal might be added back to their accounts as the press were.

“We’re not auditors. You have to ask the auditors. When it comes to accounting terms, and what happens with the clubs accounts, we don’t have information or any indications on it. We’re tied to what the auditor says. What happened was that the previous auditors said yes, and now their current auditors removed the deal from the accounts. It’s based on what happens there, we have to adhere to that, we can’t go against them.”

Barcelona President Joan Laporta has been adamant for the last four transfer windows that the club would be in the 1:1 spending rule, and without increased restrictions on their ability to register players. In January, that was briefly achieved, allowing them to register Dani Olmo and several new contracts. However this summer, the Barcelona board were again forced to put up personal guarantees in order to ensure that Marcus Rashford and Joan Garcia were registered.