Legal uncertainty over Barça player Dani Olmo's registration returns

Legal uncertainty has returned to the situation of FC Barcelona player Dani Olmo's registration. 

This week, La Liga called into question Barcelona's finances and thus the registration of Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor, prompting the reply from a Spanish governmental body confirming that the players' licenses would be maintained, causing La Liga to announce they will appeal the decision in a court of law.  

On Wednesday, La Liga questioned the Catalan club's finances, alleging that Barcelona does not "have any positive balance or registration capacity, publicly known as ‘Fair Play’, to register the players Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor.”

The league organizers also said it intends to report Barcelona to Spain’s Institute of Accounting and Auditing against an auditor employed by the club between December 31 and January 3, the period in which they hastily sold future VIP boxes in the new Camp Nou to Middle Eastern investors for €100 million, a deal which was necessary to register Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor in January. 

La Liga also questioned Barça's hiring of three separate auditors over a three-month period, only one of whom included the sale of the Camp Nou VIP boxes in their statements to the league.  

On Thursday, Spain's Superior Sports Board ('Consejo Superior de Deportes', CSD), upheld Barça's appeal and reiterated their decision from last January, that Olmo and Víctor would be allowed to play for the rest of the season. 

However, La Liga quickly responded to the CSD's decision on Thursday. A tough La Liga statement alleged that the decision "was not legally sound," for which reason they would "appeal it immediately." 

La Liga add that "the CSD resolution disregards established administrative and judicial doctrine stating that a declaration of absolute nullity must be evident." 

The league also expressed its "surprise" at the "contrast" in the "delay" of the CSD in giving a definitive resolution to their preliminary ruling in January to the "extraordinary speed" at which it responded to Barça's request for extraordinary measures. 

January registration issues

Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor were removed from the La Liga registrar, before eventually being re-registered, in a chaotic week between late December and early January earlier this season. 

The decision then was only a provisional one that came from the Consejo Superior de Deportes (CSD), a Spanish governmental body that is the highest sports council in the country. The CSD’s decision overruled previous pronouncements from La Liga, the Spanish Football Federation, and two separate courts. 

The provisional decision is one that overruled the regulation that players cannot be registered to the same club twice in one season. The club argued that the spirit of the law was not made for situations such as the case of Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor, who were de-registered after La Liga rejected Barcelona’s justification of their accounts. 

The league competition enforces strict financial measures, balancing how much clubs are allowed to spend on signings and wages relative to what money they bring in.

Barça rushed to sell VIP boxes in the future Camp Nou stadium at a price significantly lower than they felt they could have, and this money was used to show that the club once again had the margin to register the players. 

A statement from the CSD in January said that the institution “considers that failure to adopt this precautionary measure would cause serious economic and sporting harm to the club and, above all, to the players. This could also harm the interests of the Spanish national team, as well as the rest of the national competitions, including LaLiga."