Barça has even gone on tour without a contract.

BarcelonaIt is easy to imagine the faces of the Barça employees who were already in Kobe and the journalists who were flying to Japan at that time to cover the Barça tour when The club announced on Wednesday that it would not be attending due to non-payment from the promoter, D-DriveThe same ones they probably posted this Thursday when they learned that Barça is once again considering traveling to Japan and playing Vissel Kobe on Sunday after Rakuten, the company selling the friendly tickets, took over the debt. Barça is then scheduled to fly to South Korea to play the other two friendlies scheduled for this tour.

To find the last time Barça's men's team had serious complications with promoters on a summer tour, you don't have to go too far back in time. It was in 2018 in the United States, on a tour that also included the women's first team. In Dallas, there was a tense meeting between three key figures at the time: president Josep Maria Bartomeu, general manager Òscar Grau, and commercial director Xavier Asensi (current business president of Leo Messi's Inter Miami). The problem was that Barça had already played the first match of that tour, against Tottenham in Los Angeles, and the contract between the Catalan club and the tour promoter, Relevent Sports Group, had not yet been signed.

"We must return to Barcelona," Asensi told Bartomeu and Grau in Dallas before playing the second match of the tour, against Roma. Furthermore, Barça still had to play another match in the United States, against AC Milan in Santa Clara, California. Asensi was also unhappy that Barça's plane had left Barcelona for the United States without a signed contract, but he directly considered it inconceivable to continue playing matches on the tour in the same situation of legal helplessness. "Let's not mess around," Bartomeu responded to Asensi at the idea of returning to Barcelona without playing all the scheduled matches.

Barça didn't learn their lesson.

The president's decision prevailed, and Barça played against Roma in Dallas and AC Milan in Santa Clara without a signed contract. In fact, the Blaugrana team landed in Barcelona with the same uncertainty. Ultimately, Barça and Relevent ended up signing the contract after the fact. Despite this bad experience, in the summer of 2019 the club also approached the American company. First, they toured Japan with another promotion company. But, needing to make more money, Barça decided to return to the United States that same summer.

The solution was to play two friendlies against Napoli, which were conditioned by a last-minute unforeseen event: Leo Messi suffered a first-degree injury to his soleus and remained in Barcelona. The contract, which this time was already signed before the tour, specified that Relevent could apply a financial penalty to Barça if Messi missed the matches against Napoli without just cause. Barça sent medical certificates to Relevent to prove that the Argentine player's injury was real, but the company didn't believe them, and the dispute ended up in court. Barça and Relevent eventually reached an agreement.