On Sunday, Barcelona star Dani Olmo celebrated his team’s 5-2 Supercopa de Espana final thrashing of Clasico rivals Real Madrid in Saudi Arabia.
That match took place in front of watching executives from the Spanish football federation (RFEF) and La Liga — who, a week previously, had ruled the Spain international forward could not be registered to play for Barca.
When Olmo and striker Pau Victor both joined Barca last summer, the club’s financial problems and La Liga’s strict salary cap rules meant they could only be registered to play for them until December 31.
When Barcelona did not resolve the problem by that deadline, Olmo and Victor were automatically ‘unregistered’. But the Catalan club appealed to a body within the Spanish government, the Consejo Superior de Deportes (CSD) — which last week granted them an injunction to allow Olmo and Victor to continue to play while the full legal case is considered.
The Athletic looks at where this long-running and bizarre saga may go next and what its long-term consequences could be.
GO DEEPER
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How did we get to this point?
Barcelona’s deep financial problems and La Liga’s strict salary cap rules have spelt trouble for the club regularly through recent transfer windows.
Despite knowing they were already over their league-imposed limit on the latter for the 2024-25 season, they still signed Olmo for a fee in the region of €60million (£50m/$61.3m at current exchange rates) from RB Leipzig of Germany and Victor for €3m from Girona. And late in the summer window, they found a way to register them both for the first half of the season. Barca’s board then had four months to bring in more money, to raise their permitted salary level enough for both to be included for the remainder of it.
Victor found himself in the same position as Olmo (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
A new kit deal with Nike helped but not by enough. Barcelona then unsuccessfully launched a legal case against the regulations in a Catalan commercial court. They also sold future revenues from VIP seating at their Camp Nou stadium — which continues to be extensively renovated and is not expected to reopen until next season — but those funds did not arrive in time.
On January 4, a joint La Liga/RFEF committee announced the regulations were firm that players in the situation of Olmo and Victor could not be ‘re-registered’ with the same club during the same season — meaning they could not play for Barca in the second half of the current campaign.
How did the Spanish government get involved in the first place, and what is the CSD?
Barcelona’s appeal to the CSD after Olmo and Victor were officially ‘de-registered’ by La Liga was widely seen as a surprising and desperate last resort… until it was accepted.
The CSD is Spain’s sports governance body — it implements government policy and oversees the different professional and amateur federations and leagues. Its president, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes, led the government’s attempts to reform the country’s football federation after its then-president Luis Rubiales’ disgrace at the 2023 Women’s World Cup final in Australia.
But the limits of its power were seen in how Rubiales’ fellow officials have managed to fend off any major restructuring of the RFEF. So not many within the Spanish football community expected the CSD to be able to help.
Why did the CSD give the players temporary permission to play?
Hours before last Wednesday’s Supercopa semi-final against Athletic Club, the CSD announced the injunction allowing Olmo and Victor to be temporarily registered.
The CSD said the injunction was based on Barca questioning the competency of the joint La Liga-RFEF monitoring commission to decide whether to concede licenses to players. Its statement also mentioned article 27 of Spain’s sports law — which says professional sports people “have the right to a sporting career according to their potential with all guarantees and certainty.”
Various legal sources consulted by The Athletic — who, like all those cited in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity — said they were surprised the statement did not include more detail of the CSD’s legal reasoning.
There was also surprise the injunction was issued so quickly, without the CSD allowing the RFEF or La Liga to respond to the arguments made in Barca’s submission, although one legal expert said this did sometimes happen.
The CSD statement said not granting the license would do “great damage” to the two players’ careers, and to Barca. It also spoke of a negative impact on the reputation of Spanish football, given the “global visibility and impact” of the Supercopa competition and possible damage to the Spanish national team if 41-cap Olmo, who helped the side when last summer’s European Championship, were stopped from playing for them over the coming months.
How long are Olmo and Victor now registered to play for?
The injunction gives the CSD three months to rule on Barcelona’s objections. So as things stand, they will be available to play until at least early April. This gives the CSD time to consider the 60 supporting documents the Catalan club attached to its complaint. La Liga and the RFEF will also defend their decision not to register Olmo and Victor for the second half of the season.
Barca could play 22 games across three competitions within those three months, starting with Real Betis at home in the Copa del Rey’s round of 16 tomorrow (Wednesday). The quarter-finals of that competition then take place in the first week of February, with the two-legged semi-finals in late February and early April.
They have 11 La Liga matches in that time, including a potentially crucial visit to current league leaders Atletico Madrid in the middle of March. Also, Barcelona have their final two games in the league phase of the new-look Champions League this month, with a possible two-leg play-off in mid-February and potentially another two matches in the round of 16 in early March. The injunction is set to end just before the Champions League quarter-finals on April 8 and 9.
Olmo and Victor will be able to play until at least the Champions League round of 16 for Barca (Hesham Elsherif/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Spain have a two-leg Nations League quarter-final games against the Netherlands on March 20 and 23 — as things stand, Olmo is also free to play in these.
How have La Liga and RFEF reacted?
La Liga immediately responded to the CSD injunction with a statement pointing out the government body had made its decision without consulting either the league or the federation, adding that it would take what steps it could to challenge the ruling and would “study” what the CSD statement says about the potential damages done to footballer’s careers by not granting licenses.
Then on Friday, La Liga asked for a judicial review of the injunction — its only way to appeal the decision in the Spanish court system. La Liga told The Athletic yesterday there was no timeframe yet for this appeal to be heard.
On Saturday, CSD president Uribes wrote on X in defence of the decision: “We lawyers know that… when a decision shows serious signs of invalidity, the first thing is to avoid damage.”
La Liga president Javier Tebas is fiercely proud of its financial rules (Oscar del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images)
La Liga president Javier Tebas, a lawyer himself, then replied: “We lawyers know that… before acting in situations of this magnitude it is essential to understand how financial controls work and … protect the integrity of the competition… Any such action must be based in rigour and transparency. Haste is never a good advisor.”
Los que somos juristas y tomamos decisiones sabemos que, en este caso, es fundamental que antes de actuar en situaciones de este calibre, se comprenda a fondo el funcionamiento del control económico, del visado previo y de la licencia definitiva, garantizando además la audiencia…
— Javier Tebas Medrano (@Tebasjavier) January 11, 2025
New RFEF president Rafael Louzan has been more cautious, saying he would wait to see the CSD’s legal reasoning before commenting.
Louzan has his own reasons not to make much noise. If he loses a soon-to-be-announced appeal of a May 2022 conviction for the misuse of public funds, the CSD will potentially have to rule on whether he can continue in his role as head of the Spanish FA.
How have other clubs/players/coaches reacted?
When the CSD decision was announced last week, it was immediately criticised by Athletic Club president Jon Uriarte.
“It looks like a temporary measure taken by a political institution,” Uriarte told Spanish outlet Movistar TV. “It’s been eight days of the new year and we’re seeing ridiculous things. Absurd cases like this don’t help Spanish football.”
Other clubs, including Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Las Palmas and Espanyol issued club statements against the CSD’s injunction and supporting La Liga’s stance.
“What do I say to (his team’s head coach) Diego Martinez when he asks now for a player and I don’t have (financial) fair play?” Las Palmas president Miguel Angel Ramirez told radio station Cadena Cope. “That I’m an idiot? That I’m stupid, because Barcelona, without having fair play, can sign whoever they want?”
How have Barcelona figures reacted?
“I’m really happy with (the CSD decision),” head coach Hansi Flick said on Movistar TV. “Dani and Pau are more than happy, and so is everyone at the club. It’s the right decision.”
“It’s very good news to be able to count on Dani Olmo and Pau Victor,” Barcelona midfielder Pedri told Saturday’s pre-Supercopa final press conference. “It was difficult for them to travel to (Saudi) Arabia without knowing if they could play.”
“This Supercopa has been covered in controversy, about the registration of some players, which fortunately has been resolved,” said club president Joan Laporta at the official reception on the eve of the competition’s final. “We could have avoided this situation if we’d applied the rules correctly.”
Laporta greeted the decision with wild celebrations (Eric Alonso/Getty Images)
Has the issue become political in Spain?
Of course.
“This government decision, against the rules and regulations of the federation and La Liga, is a favour to a club and adulterates the competition,” Borja Semper, spokesperson of Spain’s opposition party, the conservative Partido Popular, wrote on X. “I very much doubt that this amnesty would have been conceded to a smaller club.”
The word ‘amnesty’ is extra charged in current Spanish politics, given current Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, of the socialist PSOE party, heads a coalition whose survival depends on support from the Catalan nationalist party Junts. Part of the agreement under which Junts backs Sanchez’s government was an amnesty against prosecution related to past attempts to secure Catalonia’s secession from Spain.
What are the broader implications relating to the registering of players?
Barcelona’s argument questioned the fundamentals of how player licenses are granted and how the various competitions are governed in Spanish football.
A former La Liga club chief executive told The Athletic that Barca’s targeting of the joint La Liga-RFEF monitoring commission was potentially “very intelligent”. This commission was set up in 2019 and gave La Liga more power than it previously had in the registration process, in exchange for more funding for the federation. Whether this arrangement is allowed under Spain’s current sports law could be the crux of Barcelona’s case.
GO DEEPER
After the Dani Olmo debacle, why on earth would anyone sign for Barcelona?
The same former executive said another team could attempt to use that loophole during the current transfer window while the CSD decides on the case.
Before going ahead with any signing, clubs regularly ask La Liga to confirm they have enough space within their given salary limit to register that player. A team who are over their limit may decide to just go ahead and make the deal anyway this January, then try to use the Olmo and Victor case as a precedent in court if La Liga refuses to register their new arrival.
What about implications for La Liga’s financial controls?
Tebas is immensely proud of the financial regulations introduced after he became La Liga president in 2013 which force clubs to live within their means, many of them undergoing painful reforms in order to comply.
La Liga occasionally withheld a share of TV revenues to directly pay a club’s previously outstanding back taxes or debts, while Atletico, Valencia and Sevilla are among those who found themselves over their limit at different points and had to sell or loan out players to register new signings.
If Barcelona are able to continue to play Olmo and Victor once the injunction expires — in direct defiance of La Liga — it could do serious damage to the entire financial control setup.
“It opens up a very dangerous precedent,” a spokesperson for one La Liga club told The Athletic. “La Liga’s whole ‘financial controls’ system is at risk,” said an experienced sports lawyer.
But another legal expert said the worst-case scenario is a rewrite of the rules, given most clubs support the current system.
Unlike many other clubs, Real Madrid have not openly criticised the CSD ruling, despite being Barca’s arch-rivals.
Madrid regularly launch their own legal challenges against La Liga regulations they feel are not in their interests, particularly ones around revenue sharing, and a defeat for Tebas here would likely be welcomed at the Bernabeu.
What about the consequences at Barcelona?
A big winner in all this so far is Laporta.
GO DEEPER
‘We ask them to resign immediately’: How Barca’s Olmo saga has fuelled Laporta criticism
As 2025 began, opposition to his presidency was mounting. Had Olmo left for another club this month so soon after rejoining his boyhood side, a ‘motion of censure’ vote among Barca’s club-owning socios or members was a real possibility.
Barca greeted the CSD ruling as a huge success and Laporta openly celebrated with a rude gesture apparently aimed at the Spanish football authorities before Wednesday’s Supercopa semi-final. The 62-year-old was also front and centre after Sunday’s final victory against Madrid, dancing and jumping on the pitch with the trophy.
Olmo and Victor will also be delighted, as neither wanted to leave Barcelona, especially in these circumstances. But if the CSD’s final ruling is that La Liga was correct not to re-register them this month, the pair would be in limbo again for the remainder of the season.
Whatever the CSD eventually decides for 2024-25, Olmo and Victor can be registered without problems in the summer for next season, because the future VIP seat revenue for Camp Nou means Barca will be back within their salary limit.
(Top photo: Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)
