BARCELONA
Extravagant bonus payments explain Barça's ruin
RAC1 have released figures detailing the generous add-ons included in the contracts of two Barça players which saw their wages skyrocket.
An eleven million euro bonus for playing at least half of the team's games in one season, another 1,200,000 euros if the team gets through the Champions League group stage, 3,600,000 euros as a bonus for the winning the treble and 15,000,000 euros as a loyalty payment for not joining a rival club and completing a contract... just a few examples of the kinds of bonuses written into players' contracts at Barcelona when Josep Maria Bartomeu was in charge. Those add-ons became significant whenever players renewed their contracts.
The revelations were broadcast on RAC1's Tú Diràs programme which had access to the contracts of two players, the identities of who have not been disclosed but who were described as “first team regulars” who signed contract renewals during the previous president's mandate.
Those contracts, which included extravagant bonus clauses, go some way to explaining how Barcelona's wages bill ballooned and got so out of hand, as club CEO Ferran Reverter explained on Wednesday.
The Catalan broadcaster picked apart the contracts of the two anonymous players to highlight the scale of the squad wages bill at Barcelona - as similar, performance-related bonuses would undoubtedly apply to all of the players in the first team squad.
Loyalty clause inserted in contracts at Barcelona
In one of the leaked contract, one of the terms focuses on a bonus payment for remaining at the club for the 2020-21 season - for complying, the player would receive 6.7 million euros for ‘loyalty’. And if he remained at the club for the following season, he would stand to receive a further 2.8 million euros, with the figure rising to 5.6 million for the following season.
Bear in mind that those bonuses are on top of the 13.5 million euros which the player involved would take home as part of his salary. And it doesn't stop there - for playing a minimum of half of the team's games in one season, the player in question would pocket an extra 2 million euros in the first season after renewing their contract. The percentage of games required would gradually decrease over time, reaching 35% of games played in the final year of the contract.