Chapter 501 Arriving in Madrid, a warm welcome from Real Madrid

"What? Barcelona wants to renew Messi's contract with an annual salary of 40 million. Isn't this nonsense?"

When Guardiola heard Lin Quan's words, he jumped up from the sofa in shock.

What is Laporta up to?

40 million to renew Messi's contract, wouldn't Barcelona's salary system collapse?

The annual salary the two are talking about is after-tax annual salary. According to Spanish tax rates, an after-tax annual salary of 40 million means that Barcelona spends as much as 70 million euros just to pay Messi's salary every year!

What is this concept?

Last year, the total salary expenditure of the Barcelona team was only 339 million euros, which means that Messi alone accounted for more than 20% of the total salary of the Barcelona team!

If you do this, Barcelona's financial system will definitely collapse!

Barcelona is not Manchester City. Manchester City is backed by a Middle Eastern consortium. Barcelona relies solely on membership fees, sponsorships, broadcast shares, tickets and other channels to obtain income.

The financial resources of the two teams are not at the same level at all!

Even with the European Financial Fair Play Act, Manchester City's funds are still not comparable to Barcelona.

Therefore, Manchester City offers Lin Quan the world's largest annual salary, which is affordable for Manchester City, but for Barcelona, ​​if they really force Messi to offer such a high annual salary, then sooner or later they will Fuck it!

"Based on Messi's contribution to Barcelona, ​​this salary is reasonable and I don't think it is expensive!"

Lin Quan doesn't have any opinion on this. Messi should get so much money.

Under the adverse effects of Neymar's departure and the decline of Xiaobai's form, Barcelona is now really relying on Messi alone to carry it.

It’s just that Barcelona is different from other teams. They have a lot of old players in the team, and many of them are players produced by their own youth training. This means that these players will occupy the team’s quota, and there is no way to clean them up, and they have to continue to be promoted. salary.

After Messi's salary increase, Xiaobai, Busquets, Pique and others will definitely also increase their salary.

As a result, the overall salary expenditure is very high.

In addition, since Barcelona poached Neymar, the entire club, from the club president to the ordinary fans, lacks a sense of security.

Neymar is the core of Barcelona in the next ten years and the cornerstone of their team.

However, such an important player was abducted by others.

This made Barcelona panic, and all their plans were shattered.

Therefore, it is very urgent to buy a star in the transfer market who can replace Neymar and carry the banner of Barcelona for the next ten years.

Nowadays, Barcelona's eager mentality is well known to everyone. In addition, they have received 200 million euros in liquidated damages paid by Paris Saint-Germain, making Barcelona a fool and a rich man in the transfer market. .

Whenever a player from any club is targeted by Barcelona, ​​they will be severely punished by them!

Therefore, the money in Barcelona's hands may not be able to withstand the torment.

Lin Quan predicted that after FIFA lifted their transfer ban this summer, Barcelona would soon spend all the money in their pockets, and even buy people with loans, and owe a lot of foreign debt!

After listening to Lin Quan's words, Guardiola sighed.

There is nothing he can do about Barcelona's current situation.

Barcelona now faces two major problems: reconstruction and clearance!

Rebuilding takes money and buys people, and the right people!

Clearing out is to gradually complete the replacement of old and new players in the team, allowing young players to get more opportunities, gradually replacing the old players in the team, and releasing the salary space occupied by the old players.

This is not an easy task. As a former six-time champion team, Barcelona still has many players from the Dream Three Dynasty era who are currently on the team.

These players are all meritorious players in the past, with seniority and high prestige, and their status in the Barcelona team is extraordinary.

Unless they leave on their own initiative, Barcelona is unlikely to clean them up.

Among them, the most difficult one to deal with is none other than Messi.

Messi is 29 years old this year. As long as he does not suffer major injuries, with his condition, he will have no problem playing in Barcelona for another four or five years.

For Barcelona, ​​Messi is the most influential player in the Barcelona team and has brought countless commercial benefits to the club.

Without Messi, Barcelona's commercial revenue would probably drop a lot.

But for Barcelona's long-term future development, they need to establish a person who can succeed Messi as soon as possible.

Barcelona cannot always rely on Messi, but the problem is, how difficult it is to find Messi's successor!

Even if they are found, with Messi being the system, these people will never be able to truly replace Messi in Barcelona.

They may have been the core on the court in their original team, but when they come to Barcelona, ​​the core will always belong to Messi. These people have to play supporting roles for Messi.

Asking Messi to make way for these people and assist them, not to mention Messi's own attitude, fans around the world will not agree, and sponsors will not agree.

If he cannot become Barcelona's new core, it will be impossible to replace Messi.

Therefore, even if a player like Griezmann is very suitable for Barcelona from all aspects, he can only fail when he comes to Barcelona.

This problem is difficult to solve. Barcelona must either let Messi leave, or ensure that Messi stays with the team for the rest of his life, temporarily giving up some performance requirements, and leaving a good reputation for treating meritorious veterans while preserving business interests.

However, Barcelona chose the worst option - stabbing Messi in the back at the last moment of the transfer period, resulting in a loss of personal wealth and huge infamy.

I really don’t know what they are thinking!

"Let's not talk about them anymore. You can think about the contract renewal yourself. During this time, you can concentrate on training and do your final duty. We will talk about other things later. Whether you decide to leave or stay, I will support you!"

Guardiola patted Lin Quan on the shoulder, and after saying a few words, he turned and went upstairs, returning to his study to continue studying tactics.

As the head coach, he should retain Lin Quan, because no one knows better than him how important Lin Quan is in Manchester City's tactical system.

But as a father, he must consider his son's perspective.

Now that Lin Quan is thinking about leaving Manchester City, it means that he is unhappy here.

Therefore, Guardiola will not intervene in this matter unless Lin Quan takes the initiative to ask for his opinion.

Lin Quan was a little moved. The biggest obstacle preventing him from leaving was actually Guardiola.

He is worried that his departure will have a huge impact on Manchester City, which will in turn affect Guardiola's coaching prospects.

But Guardiola himself didn't care about this at all, and instead fully supported his decision.

Thinking of this, Lin Quan sighed and looked at the new contract in front of him again.

…

Although he encountered problems with contract renewal, these did not affect Lin Quan's condition.

Whether on the training field or on the field, his performance is as stable as ever.

In the 36th round of the Premier League, Manchester City defeated Southampton 4:2 away from home. Although Lin Quan only played for half of the game, he was in hot form and completed a hat trick early in the first half.

Worried that his condition would start too early and affect his performance in the next Champions League semi-final, Guardiola put him on the bench at halftime and let him sit through the second half.

Southampton launched a crazy counterattack in the second half. The opponent's star Mane scored two goals in the 54th and 67th minutes, once tying the point difference to 1 goal.

Iheanacho stood up at the critical moment and scored a beautiful long-range shot in the 78th minute, helping the team stabilize the situation and finally win the victory.

After playing this game, the Manchester City team got ready and headed directly to Madrid to prepare for the away game against Atletico Madrid.

…

Madrid is the capital of Spain and there are many football clubs in the city.

But obviously there is only one company that is most famous, and that is Real Madrid!

As Atletico Madrid's rival in the same city, Real Madrid is very happy to make things easier for Atletico Madrid's opponents.

In addition, Real Madrid was going to challenge Bayern Munich away from home in this round, so the entire Manchester City team moved directly into Real Madrid's training base to conduct final preparation training here.

Considering that Real Madrid may also encounter Manchester United in the Champions League, it will be inevitable to borrow Manchester City's training base.

So this kind of thing is relatively common among wealthy clubs. However, when the entire Manchester City team arrived at the Real Madrid training base, they were warmly welcomed by the Real Madrid club.

The senior management of Real Madrid Club enthusiastically led them to visit Real Madrid's training base.

The Valdebebas training base should be the highest training base in Europe. Although the terrain is relatively high, the building here is very grand and luxurious.

At the entrance of the training base, there is a circular fountain. The fountain is flanked by a large number of green vegetation, full of green trees and full of vitality.

It is trimmed into the English words "RealMadrid" and erected at the entrance, which can be seen at a glance.

Walking into the base, you can see a total of 11 training venues, large and small. The lawns used in these venues are all lawns that meet international competition standards.

There is a dedicated person in charge of taking care of the lawn. Even if a large number of players from the first team and the youth team train here, you can't see any flaws on the lawn. It is obviously changed very frequently, and according to the staff of the Real Madrid Club, these lawns are Specially shipped from the Netherlands!

When Lin Quan and the others came to the training ground, there were still some players training on the training ground.

But judging by their age, most of them should be young players from the B team or the youth team.

After these people saw Lin Quan and others, their eyes shone brightly, and they all ran over to ask for autographs from the stars they admired.

As the most well-known player in the Manchester City team, Lin Quan has the most fans around him.

"Lin, can you sign your name for me?"

"I want a photo together!"

"Can you give me a signed jersey?"

"Can you sign my football?"

"I have a friend who likes you very much. Can you sign an autograph for him too?"

The young fans were all chattering excitedly around Lin Quan.

The club staff on the side saw this and tried to stop these people so that Lin Quan could be rescued.

Before he came, he had received instructions from the club chairman, Mr. Florentino, to entertain the Manchester City players, especially Lin Quan.

Real Madrid, as one of the recognized suitors of Lin Quan in football, would naturally not miss this opportunity to get closer and enhance their goodwill at such a close distance.

"It's okay, there's no need to drive them away!"

Lin Quan saw that there were not many people asking for signatures, so it wouldn't waste much time.

So Xiang Xiang met the requirements of these special fans. After satisfying the requirements of these young fans, Lin Quan also borrowed some footballs from Real Madrid. After signing his name, he gave one to the staff present.

This approach won the favor of everyone present. Although many of them were just civil servants and did not play football on weekdays, it was definitely a good thing to get a gift from the number one player in football today. matter.

Real Madrid's training base facilities are very complete. After visiting the outside facilities, Real Madrid club staff also took them to visit Real Madrid's tactical room, leisure room, guest rooms, catering center, fitness center, spa center, medical center, etc. place.

As expected of Real Madrid, the facilities at their training base are not only complete but also quite luxurious, not inferior to Manchester City at all.

It is said that Real Madrid's training base cost 120 million euros. From an expense perspective, they spent no less money to build this base than Manchester City.

Of course, Manchester City's training base is built in the city center, and the land price is more expensive.

After visiting Real Madrid's training base, Guardiola asked the players to rest early, adjust their condition and prepare for the next day's training.

Although many of the main players did not play in the games during the day, even if they did play, they only played for half or most of the game, so the physical exertion was not huge.

However, considering that they travel a lot and the altitude here is relatively high, the players may not be able to adapt to it for a while when they first arrive.

Therefore, he did not rush to let the team start training. Instead, he waited for the team to recharge their batteries and adjust their condition before training at ten o'clock the next morning.

Although on weekdays we see a lot of young players training with the Real Madrid first team, when Manchester City started training, there were still many curious young Real Madrid players running over to watch.

There are even some girls among them, who seem to be from Real Madrid’s women’s football team?

The development of professional women's football in Europe is not too early. It has only started to take off in the past few years, but it is developing very quickly.

Especially the women's football team in La Liga and the Premier League. However, in the women's football field, the strongest team is neither Manchester City nor Real Madrid, but another team in the Spanish Super League - Barcelona!

Just like Barcelona's men's team, Barcelona's women's team, which takes a technical approach, has few opponents in Spain. There is no team that can rival them. Their dominance on the field is even greater than that of Barcelona's Cosmos. Be scary.

However, although women's football is developing rapidly, the competitive level is still not high and the commercial value is also very low, so wages and benefits are completely incomparable with men's football.