Lionel Messi leaves Barcelona live updates: Latest news as ‘obstacles’ thwart contract renewal

The hard reality is that Barcelona just cannot maintain the standard of squad that everyone around the Nou Camp has been used to for years.

Three seasons ago they had the highest wage bill in world sport, but over a decade of financial mismanagement has finally caught up with them and they can only afford a salary bill similar to that of Leicester City or Aston Villa. In La Liga terms they would be third – well adrift of Real Madrid and also behind Atletico Madrid, but still ahead of Sevilla, Valencia and Villarreal. That has to be faced up to, but there is no sign yet of that realisation having sunk in or of any real progress being made on the painful moves required to generate significant transfer profits and/or cut their wage bill.

Under La Liga’s rules, only 25 per cent of profits from transfers can be used to sign new players or to re-sign those whose contracts have expired. The other 75 per cent has to go to paying off debts. So while the money raised this summer by moving out squad players and youngsters Junior Firpo (Leeds United), Jean-Clair Todibo (Nice), Konrad de la Fuente (Marseille), Francisco Trincao (Wolverhampton Wanderers) and Carles Alena (Getafe) is a start but much more serious cuts are required.

La Liga does not make its salary limits public until after the season starts, so the following is guesswork but does give an idea of the type of dilemmas Barcelona face.

Let’s say they do have some success over the coming days, meaning Umtiti and Pjanic both leave and most of their senior players agree to defer a hefty portion of this season’s wages into the future. That would all be a big help, but it would probably not free up enough space to register Messi, never mind their four summer signings.

So difficult decisions will have to be made, with it very likely that someone at the club has to make a call over whether to register one player or another. Presumably, Koeman would prefer to have Depay over 33-year-old Aguero for that La Liga opener with Real Sociedad, but how is that communicated and handled?

Whether or not such tough decisions are being considered privately, in public Laporta continues to assert that it’s not such a big deal. Instead of making the super-painful cuts to the wage bill required, he has repeatedly publicly called for “flexibility” in La Liga’s financial controls.

Most recently in the statement announcing Messi's departure...