The financial problems of FC Barcelona are no secret and it is clear that, financially, the Catalan club is going through one of the most precarious situations in its history.
The club has found it impossible to compete with the biggest clubs in Europe in the market, and had to rely on loans, free transfers, or very low-valued players to strengthen their squad over the last summer.
Player wages have been a particularly troublesome point for the club, and the fact that the club is spending a very high amount of money on player salaries is clear from the latest data published by Football Benchmark, in which the economic conditions of some of the biggest European clubs have been analyzed.
From this data, SPORT notes that Barcelona is the club with the highest staff costs in Europe, as they spent €639.3 million in salaries for the 2022-23 season.
With this figure, Barcelona are slightly ahead of Paris Saint Germain, but the French club is expected to see a decrease in this sum after the departures of Neymar and Messi.
However, it is not only expenses in which Barcelona top Europe, as they are also the club with the highest net profit in 2022-23.
The Catalans had a net profit of €303.7 million and led other clubs like Manchester City (€92.4 million) and Napoli (€79.7 million). Real Madrid had a net profit of €11.8 million this year. However, a significant part of this net profit came because of the economic levers pulled by Joan Laporta’s board.
The market value of the Barcelona squad was valued at €1,005 million in this update, with Pedri (€120 million), Gavi (€116 million), and Frenkie de Jong (€90 million) the most highly valued players. As a whole, Barcelona is valued at €3,504 million, being the sixth most highly valued club in the world.
