Believe it or not, Barca will pay Joao Felix only €400,000 a year

The wait and persistence paid off. Or maybe it can be said that the dream came true but it didn't really pay off. Joao Felix wanted only one thing all summer - a move to Barcelona!

In the last hour of the transfer window, that dream came true. But he had to agree to make serious compromises and sacrifices for that to happen. The Portuguese forward lost a lot of money...

Felix severed all ties with Atlético this summer after a loan move to Chelsea. Neither did he want to play for them anymore, nor did Simeone want him in the team. And when he gave an interview in the middle of the summer in which he openly said he wanted to play for Barcelona, he sealed his fate in Madrid.

Many clubs wanted him, he also had massive offers from Saudi Arabia, but he was only waiting for Barca. And risked a lot. The Catalan club have been in deep trouble all summer and seemed to have no chance of signing a player of Felix's caliber and value. The allowed salary budget reached its limit, there were no fresh revenues. The German Libero fund dragged Barcelona for weeks with the promise of pumping 40,000,000 euros and in the end the money never arrived. The Catalans had to sell and loan back and forth on the last day of the transfer window to make room for Felix and Joao Cancelo's contracts. Although they got rid of Umtiti, Griezmann, Kessie, Busquets, Alba, Dest and others before, which freed up a huge amount of salary space, it was not enough. They had more sales to do - Lenglet, Fati, Ezzalzouli, Garcia left in order... Money was made for Cancelo but not for Felix.

In the final hours of the transfer window, various compromises were reached in difficult negotiations between Atletico Madrid, Barca and Felix's agent Jorge Mendes.

To begin with, Felix agreed to extend his contract at Atlético from 2027 to 2029. The reason: Atlético would stretch out the amortization of transfers and reduce the costs of Financial Fair Play. Amortization is an annual cost for the transfer that is accounted for depending on the length of the contract.

In 2019, Joao Felix came from Benfica in a transfer worth 127,000,000 euros and signed a contract until 2026, which meant that the annual depreciation is about 18,000,00 euros. Last winter, ahead of his move to Chelsea, that contract was extended until 2027 to stretch out the depreciation, and has now been extended for another two years. It was very important for Atletico to extend the remaining 60,000,000 euros of depreciation over six instead of four years.

And then Atletico and Felix made the biggest sacrifice together. Barça could not pay either the loan or Felix's contract from Madrid, which amounts to just over 12,000,000 euros gross per year. The deal in the end was that Atlético would let the player go on a free loan (but without the buyout option) and pay him half of the contract. The second half was taken over by Barcelona by the player agreeing to receive - instead of the remaining 6,000,000 euros - listen to this: 400,000 euros! That was the only possible solution, so the Portuguese practically gave up half of the annual contract he had.

For example, Saudi Al Hilal offered him 400,000 euros WEEKLY! Therefore, he refused 50 times the salary to achieve his goal and play in the Barcelona jersey.