It took nearly a whole month, but Barca finally registered Koundé
A month after spending a reported €50 million to sign Jules Koundé from Sevilla, Barcelona has actually figured out how to put him on the field.
One of the strangest transfer windows ever is finally winding down for Barcelona, who successfully registered Koundé with LaLiga ahead of Sunday’s match against Real Valladolid.
Normally, a team signs a player, and then gets him registered with the league that team plays in as a matter of course. It’s simple paperwork, basically. In LaLiga, you have to be able to prove you meet some pretty basic financial fair play standards to get permission to put players on the field after you sign them.
Everyone else in the league seems to tackle this problem without much trouble, but Barca has had a tough time because they simply don’t have a lot of interest in addressing the problem in a normal way.
They’re massively in debt, which means LaLiga won’t let them sign new players without addressing that issue, or cutting their wage budget. Barcelona seems to feel that is beneath them, so they came up with a new solution: keep signing players anyway, mortgage their long-term future, and aggressively hound depth players into leaving.
This strategy, if one can call it that, almost worked for the start of the season. Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha, Franck Kessié, and Andreas Christiansen—all players that require significant financial outlays in terms of salary, and for Lewandowski and Raphinha, a combined nine figures worth of transfer fees—were cleared to play by LaLiga the day before Barcelona’s opening game against Rayo Vallecano.
Koundé, though, was stuck watching the game from a suite, as LaLiga said that Barcelona simply hadn’t done enough to get their books right to allow the former Sevilla center back to join their roster. Barcelona had spent €50 million to bring him over, but they hadn’t figured out how to actually get him on the field.
Barca drew that match against Rayo 0-0, then couldn’t make enough changes to get Koundé registered for their next match, a 4-1 win over Real Sociedad. While embarrassing, the real pressure started as the end of August approached, as LaLiga’s August 31 registration deadline began to loom over the entire situation.
Barcelona had ramped up the whole kicking players out aspect of their approach to the problem, telling Sergiño Dest to hit the bricks just weeks after having told him he was in their plans. Another player being repeatedly told to go away, Samuel Umtiti, found a solution, going on loan to Serie A side Lecce on Thursday.
That move appears to have done just enough to satisfy LaLiga, who approved Koundé on Friday. Koundé can now legally take the field for Barca, and all it took was a month of wild scrambling that have significantly reduced the club’s international standing and required financial lever-pulling that will likely hang over the institution for years and years.
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