Barcelona Ready To Take Their Own Players To Court

Barcelona are ready to take their own players to court if they won't accept a wage reduction for the start of next season's La Liga.

Barcelona's financial problems are pretty well documented by now and the club were recently warned that they had to reduce their wage bill.

La Liga president Javier Tebas warned that without doing so they wouldn't be able to register new signings Sergio Aguero, Memphis Depay and Eric Garcia.

According to reports Lionel Messi has agreed to cut his wages in half, in order to sign a new deal with the club, but their financial problems are currently delaying the process.

Messi's reduction is obviously not enough with the club wanting more players to agree wage reductions by August 15th, the same weekend La Liga starts again.

According to Mundo Deportivo, the club have warned that those who won't agree to cut their wages will have legal action started againt them.

Messi is set to sign a five year deal on hugely reduce terms. Image: PA Images

The Spanish paper says that whilst Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquetd and Sergi Roberto have all agreed wage cuts there are some outliers.

Jordi Alba is named as one experienced player who has so far rejected the wage reduction, which is said to have surprised club president Joan Laporta because of their good relationship.

Laporta had hoped that Messi's agreement to take such a vast wage cut would help persuade the other experienced players and the rest of the squad to follow suit, even if it wasn't such a big reduction.

Exactly what legal action the club can realistically take, or how successful it's likely to be, is not outlined in the report.

Alba reportedly doesn't want to take a pay cut, can you really blame him? Image: PA Images

It certainly has to be a serious situation for a club to be threatening these kind of steps against their own players, who already took a temporary reduction when the pandemic first hit.

As well as reducing player wages, the club are also attempting to get certain players out of the club before the new season starts.

Antoine Griezmann's future at the Nou Camp is in doubt, with Barca negotiating with his former club Atletico Madrid over a potential swap deal.

Clement Lenglet, Sergino Dest and Samuel Umtiti are reportedly all up for sale and Mirlam Pjanic, who only signed last summer, is also available.

Topics: Football, Barcelona, Lionel Messi, Transfer gossip, La Liga

Ryan Sidle

Ryan is a writer for SPORTbible. He covers all sport from football, formula one, cricket, rugby, tennis, athletics, mma and wrestling. He obviously hates YOUR football team and has no interest in synchronised swimming.

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