Barcelona gambled on a ‘virtuous circle’ that’s been bent way out of shape by levers

By borrowing against future revenues, Barcelona are betting on a ‘virtuous circle’ which certainly hasn’t appeared in the Champions League.

In the end, it was over before it even really began. A couple of hours before they kicked off their penultimate Champions League group match against Bayern Munich, Barcelona sat their players down to watch their own elimination from the competition. A 3-3 draw with Inter in their previous match had already left their hopes of progressing from the group stages hanging by the slenderest of threads. They needed Inter to lose their home match against Viktoria Plzen (who’d failed to pick up a single point from their previous four matches) just to be able to take the drama to the last round of matches.

And if that felt like wishful thinking on Barcelona’s part, there was good reason. Inter won 4-0. For the second year in a row the knockout stages of the Champions League will take place without one of European football’s most celebrated names, and if that wasn’t enough chastening for Barcelona, more indignity followed at Camp Nou as Bayern Munich swept them aside with a 3-0 win which only seemed to confirm the vast gulf between these two teams.

It’s common knowledge that Barcelona have a wretched record against Bayern and this latest chapter didn’t offer any improvement from a Catalonian perspective. Apart from a brief moment shortly before half-time when they thought they had a penalty only for a VAR check to deny them even that, they were outplayed again. Indeed, what has been most striking about their capitulation in this year’s tournament has been how little jeopardy there’s been.

Now the inquests will begin, but will there be enough introspection for Barcelona to get back to a position of health? Everything that has happened to the club over the last couple of years has indicated that they lack the self-awareness. This year the club’s policy has been to seek to create a ‘virtuous circle’ by spending big and reaping the rewards from doing so.

But how’s that plan looking now? It’s been reported that Barcelona had budgeted for reaching the quarter-finals of this year’s Champions League, and the outgoings for the 2022/23 season already shows the gamble taken, with spending on salaries and amortised transfer fees up from €518m last season to €656m.

The bad news doesn’t end there. Recently published accounts showed that the club still owe a fortune for players signed such a long…