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Barcelona are in the grip of a major crisis, a press report revealed on Tuesday, and it has nothing to do with the outstanding results the first team have delivered this season.
Barça won their first 7 matches in the Spanish league, and are already showing great momentum under the leadership of Hansi Flick.
Raphinha has been the standout, scoring 12 goals in the league, and Barcelona made a perfect start in the Champions League with an emphatic 5-1 win over Feyenoord.
Behind all that sporting success, though, a new warning has emerged. Barcelona's problems are far from over. The club's debts keep climbing and may now be reaching terrifying levels.
The financial difficulties are nothing new. For years, the Catalan management has carried out numerous financial operations to regain some flexibility, selling off assets and part of the club's future revenues along the way.
At the centre of this equation sits the huge "Espai Barça" project, which aims to develop the Camp Nou stadium and its infrastructure.
Construction began in May 2023, and repeated delays have thrown the club's plans into disarray. After two seasons at Montjuïc, followed by a gradual return to Camp Nou from November 2025, Barcelona will once again have to leave their stadium during the 2027-2028 season to allow the roof to be installed.
That last step will carry financial consequences of its own, even though the cost of the project has already ballooned.
A new loan for Barcelona
The newspaper "The Athletic" revealed in an investigation published on Tuesday that Barcelona recently secured authorisation to borrow an additional 510 million euros. Of that, 300 million euros will complete the renovation of the Camp Nou stadium, with 210 million euros covering operational needs.
That takes the total budget of the "Espai Barça" project to 1.8 billion euros, three times the amount initially approved in 2014.
Here lies the problem. These new investments arrive while the club is still reeling from the financial fallout of the delayed construction works.
Barcelona's management reckons it has already spent an additional 17 million euros on operational costs, and 24 million euros on investments tied to this period, on top of missing out on part of the revenues a fully operational Camp Nou could have generated. The situation may become even tougher for the Catalan club's treasury.
By The Athletic's calculations, Barcelona's total debt may exceed 2.6 billion euros, depending on the repayment schedules.
Part of this debt links directly to financing the new Camp Nou, and will be repaid from the stadium's expected future revenues.
The additional 210 million euros ties to the club's cash liquidity needs, and will be guaranteed against future television broadcasting revenues.
This operational debt is the greater worry, because it does not directly finance an asset built to generate new revenues. Barcelona have already paid 91 million euros in interest during the 2025-2026 season, and the first tranche of this new debt, worth 105 million euros, carries a fixed interest rate of 5.14%.
Meanwhile, the financing of the "Palau Blaugrana", pegged at 420 million euros, remains incomplete. Add to that the sale of 25% of La Liga's television broadcasting revenues to the private investment firm "Sixth Street". Camp Nou is expected to reach its full capacity of 105,000 seats for the 2028-2029 season. The road to getting there, though, looks set to be very costly.