New leaks in Spain revealed the current salary scale in Barcelona, and showed that a number of old or outcast players in the team occupy the first ranks in the ranking of the highest paid players.
According to the report of the Spanish channel "Esport3" (Esport3), the three leaders, Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba, are at the forefront of the list, and they are the trio nicknamed alongside Sergi Roberto as "Holy Cows" by the Catalan club's fans, in reference to their unparalleled position. touchable within the team regardless of their level and performance.
Pique tops the list with an annual salary of 28 million euros, and although the player agreed earlier to reduce his salary in order to provide the necessary funds to register new players in the team's list, the report revealed that the player will get that money through a "loyalty bonus".
Sergio Busquets came in second with 23 million euros a year, 3 million euros more than Jordi Alba, who came in third.
Frenchman Samuel Umtiti, who receives about 20 million euros annually, came in fourth place, a huge salary for the player who only participated in one match with the team this season, and this explains the insistence of the Catalan club management to push him to leave, despite the remaining year and a half in his current contract.
The leaks showed that the Brazilian Philippe Coutinho gets 16 million euros annually, a player that the administration of President Joan Laporta succeeded in getting rid of today, Friday, after he loaned him to the English club Aston Villa until the end of the current season.
Goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen earns 14 million euros annually, ahead of Frenchman Osman Dembele, who, like Serge Roberto, gets 12 million euros annually.
These numbers show the huge difficulties left by the previous administration due to its huge and unjustified spending on players who did not provide any addition to the club, which put the current administration led by Laporta in a race against time to reduce those huge salaries to make way for contracting with new players.
In the first official reaction, the Barcelona club management denied what was stated in the leaks and said that the information received was not issued by the club, and that "the amounts referred to are wrong and do not correspond to reality."