Why Barça can rest easy with Lamine Yamal's contract renewal

BarcelonaThe third most valuable soccer player in the world, According to the specialist portal Transfermarkt, it is Lamine Yamal Nasraoui. With a market value of 180 million euros, the young Barça winger is above Real Madrid's Kylian Mbappé (170) and is in third place in that ranking of reference in the purchase and sale of footballers. Only Vinícius Jr. (200) and Erling Braut Haaland (200) surpass him, but it seems a matter of time before a overtaking. The impact is brutal, and it has been unleashed after a colossal end to the season that has placed the future Barça number 10 as the favorite to win the Ballon d'Or. Only if the Champions League ends up in the hands of Ousmane Dembélé will there be solid arguments for the best player in the world not to be a kid who has just turned 18.

Aware that he is managing a superlative talent, Joan Laporta recognizes that he will have to make exceptions when it comes to valuing and remunerating him. The Barça executive president has been aware for months of the conversations between Lamine Yamal's agent, the all-powerful Jorge Mendes, and the Barça sporting director, Anderson Luis de Souza. Deco, regarding the terms of the first major contract the Rocafonda striker will sign. There have never been any doubts about the willingness of all parties, which is to strengthen the bond for many years. However, given the rapid and exponential progress, what verbally seemed on track must be revised upwards before any signature is put on the contract. "It's been discussed and pretty much put together, but the signature is missing," says Laporta, who, despite maintaining an optimistic tone, admits that in negotiations of this nature "you always have to suffer." An old cat, and despite his rapport with Mendes, the Barça leader knows perfectly well that football is a business with many facets.

From the outset, Barça is clear that Lamine Yamal must renew in the short term because he deserves it. His fee must be in line with his performance. His contract runs until June 30, 2026, but Laporta wants to secure the player's continuity much sooner and bring his salaries up to date. "His salary has to be in line with the importance he has on the team, regardless of age [...]. We must treat him specially; he's out of the norm [...]. We want him to feel important. Barça is the best club he can be at. He's Catalan, he identifies with the club, and is well advised by Robert La, from the outset, setting his salary is the highest in the squad, with around 26 million gross guaranteed in his fourth and final year of contract.

Lamine Yamal: How a multi-million-dollar renewal will impact fair play

Following this logic, and keeping in mind that the exact amounts will always remain confidential, Barça's forecast is that Lamine Yamal, who is already by far the player who sells the most shirts, will go from earning less than two million gross (what he earns right now) to securing more than 15 million until 2030 or 2031, with rising figures provided there is no stagnation in performance. Having Ballon d'Or contenders on the squad isn't cheap, and keeping winners of this prestigious award for as long as possible is even less so. Therefore, another of the features that will be proposed in the new clauses is consolidating the periods of performance-related bonuses, something that was already done with Leo Messi.

Lamine Yamal's new contract will be a real challenge for Barça's finances, which have been dominated by red ink for the past five years. The levers –asset sales to secure cash– have given life to accounts that have compromised the calculation of the League's salary cap all this time. However, the renewal of the Rocafonda native will not cause immediate damage in this regard.

In the short term, the famous fair play Financial issues won't be a stumbling block to registering the player even if his salary increases tenfold. Initially, because the current contract runs until 2026, and in the eyes of La Liga, Lamine Yamal can remain registered under this agreement. But next summer, with the new conditions in place, the club will also be able to mitigate the star's impact on the salary cap thanks to an exception that allows for temporary salary overruns to retain youth-trained talent who experience early growth. Barça already benefited from this rule with Alejandro Balde and Ansu Fati. Both renewed their contracts, but the club wasn't required to register their new salaries in full until later.