A version of this article was originally published on April 4.
For many Barcelona fans, it must have been a painful moment.
The sight of cranes demolishing one of the Camp Nou stands last week underlined the club’s determination to push on with its plan to turn its beloved but creaking concrete bowl – its home since 1957 – into a new 105,000-seat stadium that will be the centrepiece of the club’s new ‘Espai Barca’ sports campus.
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Club president Joan Laporta and his board are hurtling forward with the project, despite Barcelona’s huge financial issues and amid growing uncertainty about when it will be completed and just how much it’s going to cost.
The Athletic has spoken to many people who have worked on the Espai Barca project, as well as experts in the financial and construction industries with stakes in what happens with the Camp Nou’s facelift.
All spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their positions. The stories they told us leave an impression that is very different from the beaming confidence exuded by Laporta and other club figures.
This report will detail how…
- Previous club president Josep Maria Bartomeu left an €815million (£717.6m; $885.9m) project ready to go but Laporta immediately replaced it with an amended plan that will cost at least €1.5billion
- All the original architects, engineers and consultants have either left, been fired or are no longer working on the project — including Japanese architect firm Nikken Sekkei
- Some new executives and partners who were hired lack experience of working on such a complex project — including Turkish builders Limak
- Permits from the local council were still not sorted in April — with the current design described as a “hotch-potch” drawn from four different architectural companies, who all worked off different briefs
- There are now significant concerns about whether the project can be delivered on time and within budget
- Financing was finally secured, weeks after the deadline imposed by Laporta, in a very complex arrangement which will cost the club more than initially anticipated
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Bartomeu is not fondly remembered by many Barcelona socios (as club members are known), but in autumn 2020 his board left behind a project that was on track and “ahead of the Bernabeu”, according to a senior source who worked on Espai Barca.
Real Madrid, Barcelona’s arch-rivals, have since moved far in front with their own extensive stadium renovation work, however — their newly-remodelled Estadio Santiago Bernabeu is slated to be completed before the end of 2023.
At Barcelona, meanwhile, a carousel of different partner companies plus executives and consultants coming and going has led to delays and further costs for what is already the most expensive and complicated stadium rebuild in European football history.
💔 Imágenes no aptas para nostálgicos: así se derrumba el Camp Nou pic.twitter.com/FZCLH5AFAG
— Mundo Deportivo (@mundodeportivo) July 10, 2023
Each year spent playing across the city at their temporary stadium in Montjuic is expected to cost the already heavily indebted Catalan club more than €90million, and given all the turmoil within the Espai Barca plan, nobody can say for certain when Barcelona will return to play at their upgraded Camp Nou.
It is a situation that will concern all socios and regular Barcelona fans and there is potential for more drama to come.
Anyone who’s visited Camp Nou over the past decade will know the stadium was overdue for an upgrade.
Its archaic design made for an outdated fan experience and from the club’s perspective, there were further reasons for change. With just five per cent of its seats classified as ‘VIP’, Barcelona’s home ground generated much less matchday revenue than those of other leading clubs around Europe.
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Club members first voted in favour of the Espai Barca campus project in a referendum held in April 2014, when Bartomeu was president. Two years later, a design by Nikken Sekkei was selected, including a remodelled 105,000-seater stadium, a new 10,000-seat indoor sports arena to replace the Palau Blaugrana, a renovated museum, shop, restaurants and offices.
That was all originally due to be completed by 2021, but the club’s financial issues and the COVID-19 pandemic caused delays. Still, the project, overseen by German-American architect William T Mannarelli, had financing in place and preparations for the construction phase had begun.
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Then, in March of that year, Laporta and his new board took over. It soon became clear they had no intention of working with the plan or team they inherited.
Back during his first term as president, between 2003 and 2010, Laporta had hired English architect Norman Foster to redesign the Camp Nou, but the project never got off the ground. Now he wanted to put his own imprint on the Espai Barca idea.
The incoming directors felt the improved stadium could generate even more revenue than in the existing plan, so they worked on a different design, including quite significant structural changes. Most importantly, they wanted a double ring of VIP boxes between the second and third tiers of seats, instead of the one row at the top of the first tier that Bartomeu and Mannarelli had planned.
This would require demolishing more of the old stadium and building an entire new upper level on top of what remained.
The new board immediately began to persuade the club’s fans that their plan was better than the previous one. Socios were told that Barcelona had already invested €145million in the project but just five per cent of it had been completed, and that it had been under-costed and was already way over schedule. The new board also said the old design had become “outdated” and needed “redefining”.
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In October 2021, members were asked to approve plans to borrow “up to €1.5billion”, including €900million for the future Camp Nou. Those voting were assured the budget for first-team transfers or new contracts for key players such as Pedri or Ansu Fati would not be affected, and permits would be attained for work to start in earnest the following summer. Socios were told the project was expected to finish “towards the end of 2025”.
When the club’s 137,000-plus socios were consulted online, 48,623 votes were cast, with 87.8 per cent saying yes to borrowing the money and building the new stadium.
Laporta now had overwhelming support for his revised Espai Barca plan. But behind the scenes, more problems were brewing.
When the new board settled in during the spring of 2021, there was a deep suspicion of anybody with ties to Bartomeu’s regime. The first few months under Laporta saw an exodus of executives from all areas of the club, including many who had been involved in planning the new stadium, while contracts with external consultants were also cancelled.
Incoming director Jordi Llaurado was now overseeing Espai Barca, and new chief executive Ferran Reverter also took a big hands-on role with the most expensive project in the club’s history.
Bartomeu’s project chief Mannarelli left in the May, after nine years as the club’s director of real estate. The following month, the day-to-day management of Espai Barca became the responsibility of Ramon Ramirez.
Ramirez joined from Spanish engineers IDOM, who built Athletic Bilbao’s award-winning new San Mames stadium in the previous decade, and had worked on the Camp Nou project for Bartomeu’s board. Through the 2021-22 season, he worked with his former colleagues to incorporate the changes required by Laporta into the existing plans.
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Reverter’s shock exit in February of last year, after just seven months as CEO, was a huge setback. The official reason for his departure was that he wanted to spend more time with his family, but multiple sources have told The Athletic about many fundamental disputes behind the scenes — including a disagreement with Laporta over the sale of naming rights to the new stadium to music streaming giant Spotify.
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Publically, charismatic club chief Laporta continued to project the message that the rebuild was all going along as planned. “Everything is still on course,” he said shortly after Reverter’s departure. “In April, we expect to have the licences. The calendar says tenders (for construction partners) in July, choosing the winning bid in September.”
After a very lengthy consultation process, the Bartomeu board had secured all the required permits to begin ‘their’ Camp Nou rebuild. However, the substantial changes introduced under Laporta meant these were no longer valid.
Twelve months ago, the club were granted a permit to start preliminary work, but further approval was still required for the main phases of the project. The city authorities also had their own ideas about how to improve Laporta’s plan in areas including sustainability, technology and accessibility.
So a whole new consultation process began.
The Laporta plan for the stadium was much more complex technically than its predecessor. It meant demolishing the entire third tier of the old Camp Nou, and effectively putting an all-new 40,000-seater stadium on top of what then remained of a structure put in place in the 1960s. This was very challenging — even for professionals with lots of experience in stadium construction. The original design would have left the third tier in place.
Some industry experts feel the amended design with more all-new elements is easier to control, and not that different to what Real Madrid have done to the Bernabeu, or Liverpool with Anfield. Others, who prefer Bartomeu’s plan, argue the project was made much more technically difficult, and expensive, and all for little final benefit.
It was also last April that Barcelona confirmed that the first team would have to play their 2023-24 home games elsewhere in the city, at Montjuic. Bartomeu’s board had expected it to be possible to keep playing at the Camp Nou, even during construction. But that would be impossible under the new plan.
Laporta also admitted the previously signalled completion date had been too ambitious. Work would now take three to six months longer, and be completed during the 2025-26 season. Fans were told this was because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had affected the cost and availability of materials.
Another reason for the delays was the regular changes behind the scenes among those managing different parts of the project. Reverter was not the only important figure to depart. New heads of security, technology and merchandising hired by Laporta’s board all left within 12 months after failing to settle.
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There was a further major setback last June, when it was announced chief engineer Ramirez was leaving. This came after a reorganisation of Barcelona’s internal structures which meant he had to report to two Laporta allies — Alex Barbany, the club’s chief revenue officer, and Joan Sentelles, the director of operations and purchasing.
The big changes did not stop there.
The consultancy contract with IDOM, Ramirez’s former company, was not renewed in August. This break occurred after the club hired Tottenham Hotspur Stadium architect Populous to carry out an external review of the project’s progress. An IDOM spokesperson made clear that there had not been any falling-out, saying the firm was very happy and proud to have completed its part of the project, and that it was Barcelona’s prerogative how they continued. Populous declined to comment.
With Ramirez and his former IDOM colleagues all now gone, Barca had to find new project managers. They hired a partnership of two Catalan firms: Torrella Ingenieria-Arquitectura and JG Ingenieros. The former had no experience in sports — it previously almost exclusively designed industrial buildings — and the latter had a role in the works at Atletico Madrid’s Estadio Metropolitano, but nothing on the scale of what Barcelona were planning.
These wholesale changes caused bafflement in the construction industry. Multiple sources previously involved in the project told The Athletic that all the changes to the plans, and the coming and going of partners, made it a huge challenge for the new project managers.
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“The plan is the combined work of many different companies working to slightly revised briefs, each one from a slightly different remit,” says a source at a company which consulted on the project. “It is a little bit of a mess.”
“I used to sleep at night knowing that at least IDOM was there, they were competent,” says another source who worked on Espai Barca but was let go by the current board, and who described the hiring of a firm with limited experience like Torrella Ingenieria-Arquitectura to now manage the project as “crazy”.
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On September 6, architectural institute El Col Legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC) sent a letter — which The Athletic has seen — to Laporta, outlining its concerns.
“The COAC laments that the architects who won the competition to design the new Camp Nou will not continue to lead the project and direct the work,” wrote Guim Costa i Calsamiglia, the dean of the college.
This was all happening just as preparation work, overseen by Torrella Ingenieria-Arquitectura, took place.
That same month saw the symbolic step of removing the giant video scoreboard from the top of the stand behind the Camp Nou’s south goal. More demolition of the third tier took place during La Liga’s World Cup hiatus in November and December.
Laporta’s board were going ahead with the project. The next problem was securing the money to pay for it.
When Laporta and his new board took office in early 2021, they inherited a deal with Goldman Sachs to finance the Espai Barca project. This arrangement, arranged under Bartomeu, provided €815million of funding, at interest rates of three to four per cent.
It included a bridging loan of €90million to get works started, with the remainder to follow when the larger construction efforts began. Some of that €90m was used by Bartomeu’s board to pay other liabilities, the club’s accounts later showed.
Laporta’s new board were scathing about this when they found out, and turned to Goldman Sachs for help with the situation they had inherited. In August 2021, the US investment bank loaned the club €595million to pay off short-term liabilities coming due.
That December, socios gave Laporta’s board the green light to borrow €1.5billion more for the Espai Barca project. That was always going to take some time to organise, and as work continued on the project, more short-term money was required. In early April last year, Goldman Sachs agreed to another bridging loan of €90million to keep things moving along.
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That summer, even as Laporta and his board were activating financial levers to fill holes in their annual accounts while funding new signings including that of Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski, the Espai Barca financing was completely separate. None of the money raised from selling future TV rights or shares in Barca Studios was earmarked for the stadium rebuild. There was still no significant progress towards securing the €1.5bn loan.
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To repay that debt, it was seen as crucial that the new stadium generated a huge amount of extra revenue via its VIP boxes and visits by wealthy tourists. US firm Legends International had consulted with Bartomeu’s board and in 2020 predicted the original Espai Barca design would generate €150million extra each year — just €50m of which would be needed to make their repayments.
In December, Barca announced a new formal agreement with Legends International to promote the design and marketing of executive boxes at the new stadium. A club statement said it expected the VIP boxes to earn “more than €120m per year once the new stadium is finished and at full capacity”.
So Laporta’s new ‘improved’ stadium was now expected to generate €30million less each year than Bartomeu’s original version. The Athletic asked Legends and the club to explain this shortfall. Neither commented.
These changes to the plan made it more difficult for Goldman Sachs to organise the financing, as the projected future revenue was now lower. But it was also difficult for the bank to just back out and leave, with Barca already owing it around €800million.
“On one level, Goldman Sachs would be extremely excited that Barca need more and more money, as more money means more control for them,” said a source with intimate knowledge of the situation. “But at the same time, they must be terrified — this is one of the most complicated stadium projects ever and they have not hired people who have actually done this before.”
In early February, Laporta revealed Goldman Sachs and fellow US bankers JP Morgan were now organising the funding for the stadium through a huge bond issue. “We are expanding our market of potential investors, as well as the possibility of obtaining financing at a better price,” he said. With typical confidence, he also stated that: “Before March 31, we will have the funding for Espai Barca.”
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Then came the bombshell that Barcelona had been paying millions of euros to Spain’s then-referees chief Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, during both Bartomeu’s time as president from 2014-20 and under predecessor Sandro Rosell. Barcelona were also eliminated from the Europa League’s first knockout round by Manchester United.
These blows to the board’s reputation, and the team’s competitive level, were not helpful to finance executives trying to persuade people to invest in Barcelona’s future. UEFA, European football’s governing body, potentially punishing them with a ban from its competitions due to the Negreira case would hit their revenues so significantly they would struggle to meet the proposed bond repayments.
On March 7, Laporta told an event that “we have the financing, we are just trying to improve the terms”. However, market conditions were not moving in Barcelona’s favour. Inflation and rising interest rates led to the disappearance of Silicon Valley Bank in the US, and the collapse of Switzerland-based investment bank Credit Suisse. So it was not a great time to be trying to find buyers for the three €500million tranches of bonds the club were offering.
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An industry source told The Athletic last week that those bonds were now “junk”. The market situation meant that the interest rate was now eight to 10 per cent.
The culmination of factors well outside the club’s control, from the ongoing war in Ukraine to turmoil in the global banking system, meant that the repayments on a €1.5billion loan were now going to be hundreds of millions more than when socios agreed to the idea of borrowing that amount 18 months previously.
The day before Laporta’s self-imposed March 31 deadline for sealing the financing, a board meeting at the Camp Nou discussed the club’s options. Still, there was no final confirmation of an arrangement. Instead, the club released a one-line statement: “FC Barcelona is in the process of closing the financing of Espai Barca and informs that the negotiations will be closed next week.”
Meanwhile, it was confirmed that Barcelona were “renewing” two loans of €50million with Spanish banks just to cover their day-to-day bills.
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The following days brought more institutional turmoil, with UEFA president Alexander Ceferin suggesting punishment could be coming over the Negreira affair, and Barcelona calling on La Liga president Javier Tebas to resign due to his alleged attempts to “dynamite” the club.
All this was happening while Laporta’s board were still trying to seal the biggest stadium loan in European football history.
In late April, Barca finally arranged €1.45billion in financing for the new stadium project. It was organised by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and the club said it involved a complex series of loans from 20 different investors, with payment schedules of between five and 24 years.
No further details of the loans were made public and the interest rates on the different loans were also not divulged. The way it all played out meant there were still plenty of questions about how Laporta’s board were managing the whole project. But at least now the money was there to pay for the builders.
The decision to choose Turkish company Limak as the main contractor for the Camp Nou rebuild was taken by Barcelona’s board on January 9 this year. It was met with widespread shock and disappointment in the Spanish and Catalan construction industries.
There had been lots of interest in such a big and prestigious project from local firms, and two consortiums put in bids during the tender process — FCC-Comsa and Ferrovial-Acciona. These companies had also submitted bids when Bartomeu was president, and had spent millions over the years preparing proposals.
Since its foundation in 1976, Limak has built hotels, motorways, bridges and the new Istanbul Airport, which was completed in 2018. Its only previous sports project was the €100million, 25,000-seater Mersin Arena, built for the 2013 Mediterranean Games and afterwards home to Mersin Idman Yurdu, who spent most of their history in Turkey’s lower divisions. Playing in a three-star UEFA stadium — the same rating as Anfield, and Paris Saint-Germain’s Parc des Princes — in front of crowds averaging 6,000, the club suffered financial ruin and went out of business completely in 2019.
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Two days after the Limak announcement, Espai Barca lost yet another leading figure.
It emerged that Llaurado, the director in charge of the project, had abstained in the vote on the deal with Limak. He resigned from the board and has taken up a mostly ceremonial role at the club’s foundation.
Barcelona vice-president Elena Fort now became the visible face of the project. The main reason to choose Limak, she said, was that the Turkish company would complete the project faster and cheaper than the Spanish consortia who had also submitted bids.
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Limak has agreed to complete the new stadium by summer 2026 at a basic cost of €900million — the figure the socios heard when they were asked to vote in late 2021. Other parts of the full €1.5billion Espai Barca project, such as the Palau Blaugrana indoor arena, were to be parked for now.
It is understandable that Barcelona wanted their stadium rebuilt and reopened as quickly as possible, and for the lowest price. However, there were many doubts among others involved in the bid process over whether Limak is actually capable of delivering the project as it has promised.
Big local companies such as FCC-Comsa and Ferrovial-Acciona thought building the new stadium would take significantly more money, and more time. This is because the project is now so technically difficult, and also due to high inflation, especially in the costs of raw materials. Catalan media reports said the next lowest bid came in at €250million more than Limak’s.
A report in Spanish newspaper El Confidencial alleged Barcelona changed the criteria for the tender process, eliminating some pre-qualification requirements, before inviting Limak to bid. The Athletic has been told, by sources who worked on the Bartomeu project, that, under the criteria his board wanted, the Turkish company would not have qualified to even make a bid.
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Barcelona have denied making specific changes with Limak in mind, but did say criteria had been changed to “make the process more competitive”, again arguing that it was in the club’s interest to find a partner willing to do the work quicker and for less money. The club said Limak passed a ‘pre-qualification phase’ that required it to show technical and financial credentials.
Meanwhile, the musical chairs of directors, executives and partners continued.
In early February, Barcelona revealed Nikken Sekkei was now officially the ‘Design Guardian’ of the new stadium. This was a creative way of announcing the Japanese firm’s move into a back-seat role, with its architects — who had spent eight years on the project — now leaving. Nikken Sekkei declined to comment when asked about this by The Athletic.
Instead, in March, Limak hired London-based WOO Architects to work on updating the design of the stadium.
WOO’s founders were heavily involved in the London 2012 Olympics, and the company has since worked on projects for clients including Everton FC and Warwickshire County Cricket Club. Once again, industry sources who spoke with The Athletic were surprised that a relatively small firm was now the design lead on such a prestigious project.
At the same time, Barcelona announced that Australia-headquartered engineers Robert Bird Group and UK-based crowd dynamics consultancy Movement Strategies were coming on board.
Everyone in the industry knows about Barcelona’s difficult financial position and the idiosyncrasies of how Espai Barca has evolved, but this carousel of designers, engineers and managers has made for extra costs and further time lost.
“They have burned through a lot of architects,” said a source at a company previously but no longer involved in Espai Barca. “The current (design) plan is a hotch-potch of four different people’s work.”
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All this was happening with the knowledge that demolition work on the stadium was just months away, but without full financing in place for the rebuild, and without the full permits having yet been secured. In April, Barcelona’s city council told The Athletic that the club still needed to perform further technical work before submitting the modified final plan and supporting documentation for approval.
That should in theory be possible to complete before the summer, the city authorities said. However, it remains a challenge, especially considering that so many of the partners involved have only recently joined the project.
Barcelona will play all their 2023-24 home games at the 55,000-capacity Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys, the venue at the heart of the 1992 Olympic Games, across the city in the Montjuic district. They are also set to play at least some matches at Montjuic in 2024-25, but it is in their interests to get back to the Camp Nou as soon as possible.
Laporta has claimed there are “guarantees” from Limak that the team will be able to return in time to celebrate the club’s 125th anniversary in November 2024. That is a highly ambitious target.
Some of those consulted during The Athletic’s investigation argue that it makes practical sense to at least pause the whole Espai Barca project now. One socio, who happens to be a financier, said he would wait two years, as funding such a huge construction project should be easier once the club’s annual accounts are in a better state.
At least some within the higher echelons at the club had considered such a ‘pause’, and some directors at a marathon board meeting in April were in favour of waiting for a better moment. But Laporta has won the internal argument to push on as quickly as possible.
Pausing for reflection and taking precautions would go against everything Laporta has done since regaining the presidency. His vision was for the Bartomeu plan to be replaced, and the socios were promised the current board would provide a new, better stadium to generate more money and help fix the club’s financial problems.
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However, there are now huge reputational and financial risks involved in pressing on with the current schedule for the project, including for Goldman Sachs and Limak.
But Laporta and his allies have shown no sign of looking back.
For them, it is crucial the Espai Barca project goes ahead as planned, even if further twists and turns seem inevitable.
(Top photo: Joan Valls/Urbanandsport /NurPhoto via Getty Images)
