After everything that's happened, things get complicated very quickly. Here's the latest on Dani Olmo's situation at Barcelona.
FC Barcelona players Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor have been given the green light to play for the club after a Spanish court ruled against the decision by LaLiga and the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) not to allow them to re-register.
It's been a long and complicated story, but it seems Barcelona have found a way.
How did this all start?
Barcelona signed Olmo in the summer and initially spread the fee over the duration of his contract: a five-year deal. This allowed the club to justify the signing and fit it into the Financial Fair Play rules.
However, LaLiga did not ratify the deal and allowed the striker to be registered as an active playing member of the squad as the figures did not fit within salary cap rules, which are directly linked to the money coming into the club. The more money you earn, the more you can spend. Barcelona's recent financial problems meant that their caps were low, too low for LaLiga to approve such a big deal.
As such, Olmo was a Barça employee but was unable to play.
This is where an injury to Andreas Christensen 'came in handy' for Barcelona. While Olmo sat there waiting for the club to find more money, the Danish defender was ruled out long-term, leaving a financial hole in the Barcelona squad that they had to fill quickly. Olmo was then allowed to register as an active player in the team.
Why can Dani Olmo play for Barcelona now?
But the solution was always going to be in the short term, and dear reader, you are right to wonder: what happened after six months when Christensen returned in December? Simple: Olmo was deregistered and removed from Barcelona's books as an active player.
In a panic, the club quickly sought the necessary financial support to find enough wiggle room in their salary caps, which they did by striking a deal with Nike and using Ter Stegen's injury in the same way as Christensen's for the next six months. in the summer – but with LaLiga alert to the situation, that wasn't enough, and the December 31 deadline came and went.
Despite this, Barcelona still believed they were right when the documentation was presented, and decided to sell future VIP boxes at the new Camp Nou, which would put them over the edge financially. But it all seemed in vain: LaLiga rules say a club cannot register the same player twice in one season. As a result, even when the deals were done, Olmo was out.
A clause in his contract at the time of signing said that if he was signed out (as the player and his agent clearly knew this whole mess was possible) he would be allowed to leave for free during the season in the winter window and receive all his 5 one-year deal in advance. This left the player in a strong, if frustrating, position.
In the meantime, after being approached by Barcelona, the Spanish Federation (RFEF), together with LaLiga, issued a joint statement in which they declared that Dani Olmo (and Pau Víctor, who were also embroiled in the mess for the same reasons ) could not be re-registered, as the law literally says that a player cannot be re-registered with the same club twice in one season.
But do you think that stopped Barcelona from throwing things at the wall? Something had to stick in the end, right?
And that happened. After a lawsuit, the Spanish Consejo Superior de Deportes (CSD) decided that the two players could be part of the squad again, as the club had indeed submitted all the necessary paperwork on time. In addition, the law states that “a player can only be registered with one club without being deregistered by the club and re-registered”.
Barcelona say it was not “the club” that signed Olmo and Pau Víctor, but LaLiga. It seems the CSD agrees with them, and the pair can now play.
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