The summer before last, Barcelona made the sort of business decision that few \u2014 if any \u2014 outside the relatively niche world of sports merchandising would have noticed.<\/p>\n
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Since 2001, Barcelona\u2019s merchandising operation had been subcontracted out to Nike, the team\u2019s jersey sponsor. Through a subsidiary company, Nike ran three official Barcelona stores and 15 licensed stores, as well as overseeing some 328 licensed distributors. The branded products they sold included about 7,000 items: apparel and mugs and all manner of sundry tchotchkes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nike\u2019s contract expired in the summer of 2018, and rather than renew it, Barcelona formed its own company \u2014 the snappily-titled Barcelona Licensing and Merchandising \u2014 to pick up the mantle. The move, the club said, would enable \u201cgreater economic profitability and direct control of the brand.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was a smart decision. On Monday, the accountancy firm Deloitte confirmed that, over the course of the 2018-19 season, Barcelona had generated more revenue than any other club: $936 million, an increase of $166 million \u2014 almost 18% \u2014 from the previous year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Deloitte attributed that growth \u201cpredominantly to the decision to bring the licensing and merchandising operation in-house.\u201d For the first time, Barcelona had overtaken Real Madrid and Manchester United to become the richest football team on Earth.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That is not the only table that Barcelona leads. After winning the Spanish title the past two years, manager Ernesto Valverde\u2019s team was top of the league, again, this season. Barcelona had qualified with ease from its Champions League group, too, not losing a game as it steamrollered into the last 16. By most metrics, this is a club in fine health.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But not long after Deloitte published its findings on Monday, and after several hours of swirling rumour, Valverde was fired.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At first glance, Valverde\u2019s dismissal \u2014 and the hiring of Quique Seti\u00e9n, an avowed aesthete, as his replacement \u2014 is simply further proof that what matters at Barcelona is not just success, but style. Barcelona\u2019s position at the summit of La Liga disguises not just how brittle the team has been this season \u2014 losing three games and drawing four more, mostly to undistinguished opposition \u2014 but also how mundane it has become, even in victory.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Quique Setien. Reuters<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There have been high points \u2014 crushing Sevilla, 4-0, at home; a master class against Mallorca in November \u2014 inspired, pretty much universally, by the undiminished brilliance of Lionel Messi. But it has become an article of faith among Barcelona\u2019s fans and to some extent among its players that even though Valverde has been winning, he has not been winning in the right way.<\/p>\n
The flow of talent (again, with a couple of exceptions) from the club\u2019s youth academy has slowed. Much of the time, the team no longer takes the breath away; worse, it has often given the impression it is not really trying to do so.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Worse still, of course, was when Valverde did not win, in whatever way. Comfortably navigating the group stages of the Champions League is all well and good, but it did nothing to exorcise the ghosts of the Stadio Olimpico \u2014 where Barcelona blew a 4-1 lead against Roma in the quarterfinals in 2018 \u2014 or, more pertinently, Anfield, where Messi and his teammates were swept aside by Liverpool at the semifinal stage last year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Some expected Rome to be the end for Valverde; few imagined that, after Liverpool, he would be given yet another reprieve, handed another chance to redeem himself. To some extent, the surprise was that it took six months, and a defeat to Atl\u00e9tico Madrid in the semifinals of the Spanish Super Cup, a tournament that tops nobody\u2019s list of priorities, before Barcelona decided it could not risk a third straight spring of despair.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Barcelona is not unique, in the super-club era, in measuring itself not by how it fares domestically but by its strength in Europe \u2014 and there, incontrovertibly, Valverde had been found wanting \u2014 and nor is it alone, in Pep Guardiola\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The summer before last, Barcelona made the sort of business decision that few — if any — outside the relatively niche world of sports merchandising would have noticed. Since 2001, Barcelona’s merchandising operation had been subcontracted out to Nike, the team’s jersey sponsor. Through a subsidiary company, Nike ran three official Barcelona stores and 15 licensed stores, as well as overseeing some 328 licensed distributors. The branded products they sold included about 7,000 items: apparel and mugs and all manner of sundry tchotchkes. Nike’s contract expired in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":19227,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19228,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19226\/revisions\/19228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}