Barça fail to register Dani Olmo for second half of season

It's been a busy winter break in the offices of FC Barcelona. 

Mere hours before the new year's countdown, La Liga announced that the institution was not satisfied with the accounts presented by Barça and therefore would not allow Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor to be registered for the second half of the 2024/25 season.

Both players were signed in the summer but were only allowed to be registered thanks to space in the wage bill being freed up from other squad members' long-term injuries. 

La Liga have strict financial rules that will now allow for players to be registered unless the clubs can demonstrate that they have the financial backing to sustainably make the signings, based on income generated. 

The latest news of La Liga's rejection of the accounts and refusal to register the players, which arrived on Saturday, is significant as the competition rules stipulate that no player can be registered, de-registered, and re-registered by the same club in the same season. This would mean that Olmo and Víctor cannot play for FC Barcelona for the remainder of the season, and are technically not Barça players. 

It's also been reported by other media that Olmo has a clause in his contract that he signed in the summer that would allow him to leave the Catalan club for free if they failed to register him by January. Such a departure would come with the player being paid the amount owed to him in the contract in full, as well as Barça paying the full transfer fee to his previous club, RB Leipzig.

Olmo and Víctor were only given temporary registrations at the beginning of the campaign, and Barça had hoped to find other revenue streams between September and January that would give them the financial capability to confirm the players' registration. 

Without being registered to any club, Dani Olmo would not be able to play for the Spanish national team either. 

Failing to have Olmo and Víctor registered is a huge blow to the club's president, Joan Laporta, who is now facing serious questions over his leadership after such a seismic and public embarrassment. 

Laporta and his legal team had attempted to get temporary rulings from courts to have Olmo and Víctor registered, but all judges sided against the club.

The blaugrana made a high-profile long-term deal with Nike that brought in significant revenues, while in more recent days they also rushed to finalize a deal for future VIP boxes in the new Camp Nou stadium. 

Both deals, however, did not result in the sufficient finances being lodged into the club's accounts that would satisfy La Liga auditors to greenlight the players' registration. 

La Liga are understood to be extra vigilant with the Catalan club now after the club had successfully seen other players registered last year thanks to a deal based on the sale of Barça's in-house media production company, despite the fact that the club never received anything close to the initially reported received sums. 

The club is now expected to take the legal case even further, with an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport being mulled up.