Tio de Jong: Greedy Barcelona’s new tradition is giving players shit end of stick

Every day is Christmas for Barca who continue to over-indulge in the transfer market and attempt to spend their way out of trouble while their beaten-down stars take the hit, writes Laura Lawrence.

The Catalans have a tradition they enact every year from the feast day of the Immaculate Conception, December 8 to Christmas Day. They place a hollow log into their homes, give him a happy face and a little red hat and every evening fill him with treats. Bear with me, I am going somewhere with this.

The little log is called Tio de Nadal, which roughly translates as the Shit Log. Children take care of the log so it will ‘poo out’ treats. So, the kids love him, pray for him, and keep him warm until they want the treats on Christmas Day.

That’s when they hit him with sticks to get the spoils out. There’s even a little song they sing while they’re doing it.

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They just can’t stop trying to push in extravagant treats like Robert Lewandowski and Raphinha. Instead, what they keep getting are salty herrings with actual contracts. Barca president, Joan Laporta, is beating a very big, very stupid stick at a fetid pinata.

Told you I was going somewhere with it.

Barcelona FC need an intervention and for La Liga to take that stick off them. Frenkie de Jong is being roundly beaten for not wanting to join Manchester United to ease Barcelona’s self-imposed financial omnishambles. Man Utd being a club that’s vying for their dysfunctional crown. De Jong wants Champions League football, he doesn’t want to take another wage cut and he doesn’t want to be benched. 

You can keep hitting him with the stick but he’s not going to defecate an option that makes his career worse so Barca can spaff more imaginary cash on yet more players. Football clubs aren’t known for living within their means, but Barcelona are using ‘accounting processes’ that government Covid PPE contractors would be proud of.

The newest, hardest stick to hit De Jong with is the allegation that his contract extension involved “criminality”. Thereby nulling his contract and forcing him back to his previous agreement.

Shit, De Jong… We’ve promised Lewandowski a massive bonus.

Lionel Messi did want to take a pay cut to stay at Camp Nou. (By the way, there are rumours Barca are trying to buy him back). Barcelona stalwart Gerard Pique has taken a second salary slash. This is seen as loyalty rather than complicity in the mess. Martin Braithwaite was booed by his own fans in a friendly against Mexican team Pumas UNAM because he won’t leave. A herring sewn in the curtains.

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Spending your way out of a crisis might be a very Keynesian economic policy for governments but Barcelona aren’t trying to stimulate an economy. You can’t shit almonds and nougats without the finances or legitimate borrowing to do it no matter how hard you hit your contracted players.

Like I said, Barcelona FC need an intervention and quickly.

Follow Laura on Twitter @YICETOR