La Liga chief Javier Tebas has confirmed that Barcelona will not be able to sign new players this summer unless they first raise £177m.
On the pitch, Xavi's side have enjoyed an excellent campaign in Spain's top flight, establishing a seven-point lead at the top of the standings.
However, the Catalan giants only put together a squad capable of toppling their rivals through taking out economic levers, selling percentages of future television revenue and Barcelona Studios.
Although that helped ease their well-documented financial issues in the short term, it came with risks, and early exits from the Champions League and Europa League have denied Barcelona much-needed income that they had already included in their budget.
Taking everything into consideration, it has been claimed for a number of weeks that Barcelona face a €200m (£177.2m) shortfall with their books and meeting FFP criteria.
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The topic was naturally on the agenda at the Financial Times' Business of Football summit in London on Thursday, an occasion attended by Tebas who has a reputation of strictly enforcing financial regulations in La Liga.
Speaking at the event, Tebas went into detail over the scenario that Barcelona face in the summer, stating that they must make up their deficit before they can register any new players.
Tebas said: "As of today, Barcelona doesn't have any room in its budget to spend in the upcoming transfer window. Barcelona has been involved in questionable behaviour which has had an impact on La Liga and we are acting accordingly. We have ruled that they can no longer sign more players.
"They sold off £620m (€700m) in TV rights and tried to find different ways to solve the situation but they won't be able to do that next season. We have strict economic controls. At the end of each window, we tell all the clubs in La Liga what they can spend.
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"In the case of Barcelona, they have to drop from spending on wages and transfers from £532m to £399m (€650m to €450m), so it's a budget of minus £177m (€200m).
"They have to reduce their investment in players and we have encouraged them to sell players because, for every amount they raise in sales, they can spend 40 per cent of that."
While some of that deficit will likely be made up through the re-negotiation of player's wages, Barcelona will only make significant progress in meeting the demands of Tebas if they make at least one big-money sale.
Nevertheless, that was the case during the previous summer, and Joan Laporta was unable to find a noteworthy solution for the long term.
Players such as Clement Lenglet, Sergino Dest and Nico Gonzalez - each of whom are on loan elsewhere - are likely to be offered out to clubs before any star names.
Darren Plant
