Xavi Hernandez's FC Barcelona have been handed a huge blow after a top Spanish official confirmed that the club will not be able to make any signings going forward.
Barca's financial woes have been widely publicised, with the club having had to offload a large number of their players since 2021 in order to balance the books, Lionel Messi's shock free-agent departure being the biggest example.
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Ahead of this season, following the pulling of a number of "economic levers" in which various club assets were sold, the Blaugrana spent about €150 million (R2.9 billion) on signing Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha, and Jules Kounde, while Andreas Christensen, Franck Kessie, Hector Bellerin, and Marcos Alonso arrived on free transfers.
The club found it difficult to register some of these players at the start of the campaign due to LaLiga's salary cap regulations, which saw Kounde only being registered to play a month after officially joining from Sevilla.
Despite recently parting ways with the likes of Philippe Coutinho, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Memphis Depay, the Catalan giants are not out of the woods yet, with LaLiga president Javier Tebas revealing that Barca will now be prevented from getting new signings on their books until more of their current stars are offloaded.
"As of today, Barcelona doesn't have any room in its budget to spend in the upcoming transfer window," Tebas said at the Financial Times Business of Football summit in London on Thursday, according to the Metro.
"Barcelona has been involved in questionable behaviour which has had an impact on La Liga and we are acting accordingly.
"We have ruled that they can no longer sign more players.
"They sold off €700 million (R13.4 billion) in TV rights and tried to find different ways to solve the situation but they won't be able to do that next season.
"We have strict economic controls. At the end of each window, we tell all the clubs in LaLiga what they can spend.
"In the case of Barcelona, they have to drop from spending on wages and transfers from €650 million (R12.5 billion) to €450 million (R8.6 billion) – so it's a budget of minus €200 million (R3.8 billion).
"They have to reduce their investment in players and we have encouraged them to sell players because for every amount they raise in sales, they can spend 40% of that."
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