Barcelona ‘almost certain’ La Liga will register Dani Olmo and Pau Victor after heavyweight meeting | OneFootball

Barcelona are convinced that they will be able to resolve their registration issues with Dani Olmo and Pau Victor in the next 24 hours, having seen La Liga unregister both players on their website this Wednesday.

President Joan Laporta, Vice-President Rafa Yuste, Treasurer Ferran Olive and Director Joan Soler met at the club offices on Thursday for an encounter that lasted almost four hours, as per Marca, as they tried to resolve the matter. They came out of that meeting optimistic, with the same source saying they believe that they will have Olmo and Victor registered before Hansi Flick’s pre-match press conference at 13:00 CEST on Friday.

That information is corroborated by Sport, who say that Barcelona are ‘almost certain’ that La Liga will accept the sale of VIP boxes at Camp Nou, and thus increase their salary limit sufficiently to register Olmo and Victor again. They consider that the entire deal has been ‘accredited’, and that the €100m will be added to their accounts, in a deal that will run for the next 20 years with two as of yet unnamed companies from Qatar and Dubai.

The obvious issue is that they have already passed the deadline to have Olmo and Victor registered. Once they have been unregistered, they cannot be registered a second time, and as things stand, will not be able to play for the rest of the season, be it for Barcelona or otherwise. However RAC1 explain that Barcelona will refer to a clause in the ruling that describes an exception for ‘force majeure’, which in legal terms describes ‘unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract.’

It is not entirely clear what they will refer to in that sense, but Barcelona have been briefing to local media that La Liga’s request for additional documentation is behind the delay in registering Olmo and Victor. Laporta also believes that they provided all the necessary documents to La Liga on time, and it was their examination process that took the matter into January, and past the deadline.

The fate of Olmo and Victor lies in the hands of the interpretation of force majeure and ultimately, La Liga. Either way, there will be significant backlash; in Barcelona, Joan Laporta’s detractors will feel they have the ammunition to end his presidency if they go unregistered; in La Liga, other clubs will no doubt be asking questions of President Javier Tebas if they receive what will be seen as preferential treatment.