True, but their wage cap is relative to their current income. Instead of reducing their wages, they can increase the other, a sponsorship deal, a stadium naing deal etc. Or a combination of that and reducing the wages. They will come up with something, I'm sure, can't see them going into the season not registering the players they've signed.
Doubt it would be enough to also add Messi though. If indeed that is what they both actually want.
As I understand it, the salary cap is based on last years revenue and not the upcoming years. Barcas salaries was last year 110% of their revenue, and the league cap is 75%. 75% is still a very high number. Might seem unfair since most clubs (if not all) had reduced revenue last year because of the pandemic, but thats the rules La Liga has set. It would be hard to set a salary cap based on next seasons revenue since it will be difficult to estimate what the revenue will be, and there is a fear clubs like Barca would base their estimated income this upcoming year based on a best case scenario, rather than a realistic one.
The salary cap doesnt mean that if the club already is above it, they would have to get rid of their current assets, since it could mean that clubs would more or less be forced to let assets they may have invested a lot of money in go. But it does mean that clubs that are in a bad financial state cant add new expenses to their salary bill before they have reduced their salaries to below 75% of last years revenue. Basically, the league won't force clubs to sell players, but they will prevent them from signing new ones as long as they are in a bad financial state. This is also why Barcelona are only allowed to reinvest 25% of any income from player sales on new assets.
They are trying to make large parts of their squad to accept a 40% paycut, but if I had a contract with a football club and the club asked me to take a 40% paycut so they can afford to sign a new player that will take my place in the team, I would obviously say no to that.
I still believe Barca will have a "clever" solution to solve this problem, but from the outside they sure look to be more or less f*cked. They will have huge problems selling any assets for anywhere near what they paid for them (or anything at all) because of 2 reasons: 1 - The whole world knows in what financial state they are in and how desperate they are to reduce their wage bill. 2 - Most, if not all, players dont want to leave since they are already playing in the club of their dreams and a departure would also mean they have to take a huge paycut since pretty much all of them are on wages about twice as high as their actual value.
Will be interesting to follow how they will sort this out. My guess at the moment is that Tebas will eventually back down from his no exceptions approach if the reallity is that the league would lose Messi if he dont.
