Barça persecuted Piqué and Jordi Alba because they didn't pay for their VIP boxes: "Don't you think the world is turned upside down that the club finances players who earn more than ten million a year?"

• ESTEBAN URREIZTIETA

  @eurreiztieta

  Barcelona

• ORPHEUS SUAREZ

  @OrfeoSuarez

  Barcelona

• ILLUSTRATION: LUCIA MARTIN

Updated Thursday, September 22, 2022-13:17

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Those responsible for the

alerted the club's leadership in

that two first-team players,

, were not paying for the venues they had rented for their family and friends.

One of the managers of

​​the club,

, communicated in writing that among the list of defaulters were the companies

and

, owned by Piqué and Alba, respectively.

Specifically, the center-back accumulated at that time a

and the side, of

euros.

In this way, the club activated the internal protocol to claim the outstanding amounts from them along with 21 more companies that had debts, the vast majority of which were much lower than those of the players.

That is, sending a request threatening legal action if they did not settle their debts immediately with the entity.

"There are two players who have unpaid bills," the club worker warned Barça's top managers on October 6, 2020, in the midst of a pandemic.

"I ask that your KAM (Key Account Manager) speak with our Finance department to see if they make a payment guarantee, we collect it from the payroll itself or we take it to legal."

The legal department immediately replied that "any deferment of payment must be guaranteed, as is required of us when we are the debtors, and if that is not the case, unfortunately,

"Regarding the players," emphasized the club's lawyers, "the issue is even more serious" because "the only option to defer payment is that they authorize us to compensate them with the amounts that the club must pay them" .

"We do not agree to send them a burofax"

Given that the situation was not resolved, the legal services of the Barça entity adopted days later the decision to "send a formal request" to Piqué and Alba, urging them to pay the outstanding amounts for the stadium's VIP boxes.

After initial reluctance, both reached an agreement in extremis to pay them.

In such a way that Kosmos promised to make a first payment of

in just over a month and an agreement was reached with Alba to deduct

from his club payroll.

The leadership of Barcelona intervened in the dispute and the person in charge of the Stadium Business,

, sent an email to all the administration positions making it clear that they did not want problems with two of their most important footballers and that, therefore, they did not the established protocol was going to be applied with them.

"We

".

"It puts at risk the renewal of all of them, who are interested in doing it and have told us so," he stressed.

In the midst of the internal debate, the club's own lawyers allowed themselves to send a question by mail that did not get an answer: "Don't you think the world is upside down that the club finances players who earn more than ten million a year?" .

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• FC Barcelona

• Gerard Piqué

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