Barça's financial fair play went up in smoke in 2020. With the pandemic and closed stadiums, revenues fell and the club was left with no capacity to pay player salaries. In 2021, with Joan Laporta in the box, the decision to tweak the numbers and load up to 555 million in losses onto the fiscal year that had started with Bartomeu as president, only aggravated the problem to the extreme. Five years later, and despite having activated levers, having fine-tuned the wage bill, and having closed low cost, the club is heading towards another summer with problems to face the transfer market normally.