Barcelona spent €1bn+ on transfers and got worse — ending up about US$1.4bn in debt

Barcelona won the 2015 Champions League with a homegrown generation that had delivered dominance on the cheap, and became the first club in any sport to pass US$1 billion in annual revenue. The decline ran through president Josep Maria Bartomeu, accidental president from 2014 and election winner a month after that triumph. Recruitment under him was factional: directors pushed signings without telling the coach, candidates campaigned on the stars they would buy, and he cycled through five sporting directors in six years, sacking the man who built his best attack.

When Neymar left for PSG at a world-record €222m in 2017, every club knew Barcelona had the money and the desperation. An agent offered the board 18-year-old Kylian Mbappé; it passed. Its technical staff rejected Erling Haaland as not 'a player in the Barca model'. Instead it paid Dortmund €105m plus €42m in easy bonuses for Ousmane Dembélé — more than Mbappé would have cost — and six months later €160m for Philippe Coutinho. Neither succeeded. Overpaying was habit: €75m for Frenkie de Jong, nearly double Ajax's hope, and €120m for 28-year-old Antoine Griezmann, a record for a player over 25.

Lionel Messi's contract — more than €555m total between 2017 and 2021, his salary tripling from 2014 to 2020 — produced 'the contagion of the rest of the team': every Messi raise pushed teammates' demands up. The accounting nadir was the June 2020 swap with Juventus in which Miralem Pjanić was 'sold' to Barcelona for €60m and Arthur Melo to Juve for €72m — sums 'invented for accounting purposes', with only €12m of real money changing hands. By 2020-21 Barcelona finished third in La Liga, its worst since 2008, while La Liga capped what it could spend at a third of three years earlier.

Recruitment ran on internal factions and election promises rather than a sporting plan; five sporting directors in six years erased all continuity.

Selling clubs knew Barca had Neymar money and no alternative target, so every negotiation started above market — Ajax's agent recalled their sporting director cried with relief at the de Jong close.

It paid record fees for stars at or past their peak while declining the two players who defined the next decade, Mbappé and Haaland, for non-football reasons.

Star wages bred contagion across the squad, until the wage bill itself blocked the signing Messi most wanted — Neymar — and then the club's own registrations.

In talent businesses, recruitment is a process, not an event. A politicised one buys finished names at peak prices with no alternatives, while the cheaper future stars walk past the door.

By August 2021 La Liga had blocked Barcelona from spending money it did not have; even re-signing Messi at a reported half his pay faced obstacles, and the everything-must-go sale of other players found few takers, with Dembélé and Coutinho injured. Barca had slipped to signing free agents only, registrable only by first slashing the wage bill. It was still paying part of Luis Suárez's salary at Atlético, the club his 21 league goals carried to the 2021 title, and risked selling Pedri and de Jong. Matheus Fernandes, the €7m reserve who played 17 minutes, was dismissed by email and sued.