Leeds United sold the 2025 Ballon d’Or contender to Barcelona three years ago.
Barcelona’s transfer debt has surpassed £130million but the financially strapped Spanish giants do not owe Leeds United anything for Raphinha.
Leeds sold Raphinha over three years ago following the agreement of a deal worth £50m plus £5m add-ons, with the Brazilian signing a five-year contract at Camp Nou. Unlike most modern transfers, Elland Road chiefs received the majority of that initial fee upfront instead of it being spread across multiple years.
On Monday, Barcelona released their latest financial results, revealing they had racked up a debt of £138m that was committed to historic transfer fees. Within those results was a breakdown of exactly how much was owed to each club and for whom.
The documents show Barcelona should still owe Leeds just under €42m (£36.5m) for their purchase of Raphinha, although there is an asterisk next to that debt and a few others. As explained underneath the list of debts, clubs with an asterisk ‘have factored their right to collect with a financial institution’.
Multiple reports have since suggested Leeds are still owed £36.5m for the sale of Raphinha but as the YEP reported over a year ago, that is not the case. The YEP also highlighted the possibility Barcelona’s debt on the winger might well be owed to a creditor, with Elland Road chiefs securing their end of the transfer fee long ago.
Leeds’ published accounts for the 2022/23 campaign, in which they sold Raphinha and Kalvin Phillips to Barcelona and Manchester City respectively, showed they were owed just £2m from transfer fees at that time. Their 2023/24 accounts were published in April and that number had risen to £69m, albeit those were nothing to do with Raphinha.
Leeds United owed close to £70m - but not for Raphinha
During that period, Leeds sanctioned the permanent exits of Tyler Adams and Luis Sinisterra to Bournemouth while also selling Archie Gray to Tottenham Hotspur. The increase in money owed to the Whites is likely linked to those transfers during the financial period in question.
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Like Barcelona, Leeds still owe a huge chunk of cash out to rival clubs for transfers, with their 2023/24 accounts putting that figure at £142m - down from £190m the year before. Whites chairman Paraag Marathe has addressed that ‘credit card bill’ on multiple occasions, insisting it was factored into 49ers enterprises purchase of the club from Andrea Radrizzani in 2023.
“The outbound transfer payments we have to make were already contemplated as went through the transaction last summer and that was sort of reflected in the acquisition,” he has said previously. “We inherited a credit card bill we knew we had to take care of and we made sure we had the investment we needed up front and capital commitment to make sure we were covered on that and able to manage that properly.
“What is not in those numbers reported is some of the inbound payments – for example, our sales of Tyler Adams and Luis Sinisterra, there’s some inbound transfer payments coming from that. The net is already a bit lower but we have what we need to be competitive and we’ll shape the squad accordingly. We have what we need to compete among the best.”
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