Barcelona in race to register Dani Olmo and avoid losing him on free transfer

Barcelona have three days to find a way to comply with La Liga’s financial fair play rules or they will not be able to register Dani Olmo for the rest of the season – and face the prospect of him leaving as a free agent just six months after joining in a €55m (£45.6m) transfer.

On Friday, a court in Barcelona published its decision to deny a lawsuit that the club had brought against the league’s rules, in which they requested a legal order to extend the player’s registration beyond 31 December.

Barcelona argued that not granting the extension would infringe upon the player’s worker rights, that the league’s economic commission did not have the jurisdiction to impose limitations, and that a long term injury to goalkeeper Marc André ter Stegen should allow them to use his salary to register Olmo. But Ignacio Fernández de Senespleda, a presiding judge at the city’s commercial court who had accepted a similar request with midfielder Gavi in 2023, rejected their case.

Unlike in 2023, La Liga’s lawyers had attended the court to present their case on 23 December after some clubs had questioned Barcelona’s approach. “La Liga has put in place rules of budgetary balance, using the authority given to it by the law,” the league said in a statement welcoming the decision which concluded that “none of the necessary conditions for the adoption of a temporary measure have been met.” It added that the rules had been “applied in the same way to all clubs.”

The ruling leaves Olmo and striker Pau Víctor currently unavailable in the new year, unless an alternative solution can be found. The Spain international has a clause in his contract that allows him to unilaterally depart should the club fail to register him. Barça have made a further appeal which will be heard by a different court on 30 December, with a resolution expected by the deadline on the following day.

Striker Pau Víctor is the other player who Barcelona are struggling to register in time for the January deadline. 

Barcelona are in breach of the €426m salary limit set for the 2024-25 season, meaning that they have limitations imposed upon them when it comes to registering players. For accounting purposes, Olmo’s salary is just over €21m a year.

Having signed the Euro 2024 star from RB Leipzig, Barcelona were unable to register him until week three of the season, when they took advantage of Article 77 of league rules which allows clubs to temporarily use up to 80% of the salary due to an injured player on an alternative. An achilles injury to Andreas Christensen provided sufficient margin to register Olmo, but only until the end of the calendar year.

That gave Barcelona time to find solutions and reach what is commonly known as “1:1”, the point at which there is a balance between outgoings and income, and a club can spend a euro for every euro they earn. A new, seven-year kit deal with Nike had been seen as the key and Barcelona also believed they would be able to apply the salary “freed” up by a serious knee injury suffered by Ter Stegen to Olmo.

The league calculated that, although the signing bonus from Nike had been paid, they still had not reached their financial targets and judged that Ter Stegen’s injury had already been used to register Wojciech Szczesny, who Barcelona brought out of retirement to sign on an emergency deal. The judge agreed with that interpretation.

The aim of Article 77, the league’s statement said, “is to not [allow a serious injury to] damage the a team’s ability to compete, not to register players whose salary means that they exceed the limit, which is what Barcelona are pretending.”

Barcelona must now find a way of balancing the deficit in time to register Olmo and Pau Víctor before 31 December. The sale of VIP boxes at the renovated Camp Nou is one possible avenue, while the club’s directors may also opt for personally underwriting a financial guarantee.

The club’s hierarchy are confident a solution will be found and have reassured Olmo that he will be registered before the deadline. The 26-year-old has played 15 times for Barça this season, scoring six goals. With time running out, Olmo was seen in Milwaukee visiting basketball player Damian Lillard, with whom he shares a wrist-tapping celebration.