The offers Barça will have to listen to this summer

BarcelonaNico Williams. As ARA explained two days ago, Barça is seriously considering the signing again. Lamine Yamal's close friend in the Spanish national team. His price tag is set at €58 million (almost €64 million if you take into account the CPI), he fits the needs of the sporting directorate, and is, from the perspective of Joan Laporta, who must revalidate his presidency at the polls next summer, the player who most excites Barcelona fans. Suddenly, the Barcelona director no longer cares that the Navarrese winger decided to stay at Athletic Club a year ago because he wasn't sure about signing him.

The gesture of his agent, Félix Tainta, offering himself last week at Deco has encouraged the Catalan club to explore the viability of a signing that, from the outset, requires the availability of more than €60 million to be paid in one lump sum. The search for credit policies to undertake ambitious market operations goes in that direction. Because if Barça really wants to fight for Williams, they will need plenty of cash in Aristides Maillol's box, especially after the payment, also unilateral, of Joan Garcia's termination clause, who is hours away from being officially presented in the Barça shirt.

Javier Tebas' umpteenth alert

But beyond this detail, which can be remedied by adding more debt to the balance sheet, La Liga president Javier Tebas has reminded Laporta of the maxim he sets for each summer. "I don't know if Barça can sign Nico Williams. The club must make moves [...] It's one thing to make a signing official and another to register him," says the head of the Spanish football association. Tebas has the financial situation of all the First and Second Division teams under control and knows that Barça has not yet regained the balance between income and sports salaries despite the millions generated in recent years through lever.So, if these "movements" were not present, not only would Garcia's record be in doubt, but Williams' record would be impossible altogether.

And what are those movements?

To climb the famous fair play, the most effective recipe sounds like a cliché: "Let them out before they enter." VIP of the future Camp Nou (a transaction that auditor Crowe has yet to validate), Barça needs to offload players in order to register new ones. Whether or not they return to the 1:1 salary cap rule (registering players for the same value as they release) or not, stopping paying certain salaries and aiming for a lucrative transfer fee is an essential condition to avoid suffering with registrations and not repeating agonies like that of Jules Kounde in 2022, that of I2 2024, and part of 2025.

For now, Barça has already gotten rid of the burden of Clément Lenglet. In exchange for 1.5 million, they save 16 million on his salary and make room within the salary cap. They have also earned 14 million between the transfer of Álex Valle to Como and the sale of Jean-Clair Todibo to West Ham. However, more moves are needed to continue expanding the margin. One that has been in the works for weeks is the sale of Ansu Fati, who has finally understood that Hansi Flick doesn't count on him. The Spanish-Guinean wants to go on loan to Monaco, although the deal is stalled because the principality doesn't even pay him half his salary.

But to truly think big, which is what the signings of Joan Garcia and the viability of signing Nico Williams demand, much more ambitious and even surprising exits are necessary. Ambitious is to think that Marc-André ter Stegen, hurt by the arrival of competition and by what he understands to be a campaign against him, will agree to leave Barça after eleven years without putting up a fight. Ambitious is to find a buyer interested in Ronald Araujo, who is the center-back least adaptable to the defensive risk Flick advocates. And it would be surprising to receive a multi-million-dollar offer for Fermín López or Raphinha Dias (more than 60 million for the Andalusian and 100 million for the Brazilian) and accept it. The problem with all these hypothetical avenues of income and savings is that they clash with the will of those interested, which is none other than to continue at Barcelona. The project is too promising to miss out.

Therefore, it is most likely that Joan Garcia will debut in preseason without having a guaranteed registration and that Barça will seek capital to pay Nico Williams' release clause with the hottest thing in the kitchen sink. The implicit pressure to leave, which is what Ter Stegen is suffering today and what the reborn Frenkie de Jong also experienced three summers ago, doesn't always work. And the market, as we know, is very capricious, changing, and often exposed to sudden turns. Or else, who would have imagined a year ago that Barça would sack İlkay Gündoğan to contribute to registering Olmo?