Barcelona chief makes worrying Philippe Coutinho admission amid £427m crisis

Barcelona vice president for finance, Eduard Romeu, claims the Spanish club remain in crisis, despite the sale of Philippe Coutinho to Aston Villa.

It turns out the £17m Barca recouped from the sale of Coutinho last month has done little to help resolve the club's financial mess. In an interview with Spanish publication SPORT, Romeu claimed Barca required another €500m (about £427m) to 'save' itself.

"The number doing the most damage is asset imbalance," he told SPORT. "The negative capital of €500 million. You could add €150m to that in losses this season if we didn't do anything. I said it before, if someone wants give me €500m... that is what we need to save Barca."

Gallery: Ranked! The top 20 most expensive transfers ever (FourFourTwo)

The club have shelled out extortionate transfer fees and wages to players in recent years and are now paying the price for some expensive mistakes in the market. One of those was Coutinho, who Barca bought for £142m from Liverpool in January 2018.

The Brazilian won La Liga and the Spanish Cup twice, as well as the Spanish Super Cup, yet his transfer went down as a failure and he was sent out on loan twice during his four-year stay at Camp Nou. After a year at Bayern Munich in 2019/20, Coutinho left Barca again for the second half of the 2021/22 campaign to reunite with old Liverpool team-mate Steven Gerrard at Villa.

After a largely successful loan period, Villa agreed a £17m fee with Barcelona to take their record signing off their books for good. But Romeu has been talking about the sale of the Brazil international, claiming there is much more work to be done.

Asked by SPORT if he regretted devaluing so many players last summer, Romeu responded: "We knew it was a bold decision