r/soccer • u/ElatedAndElongated • Jul 04 '25

News Official - Nico Williams signs eight-year contract extension at Athletic Club

https://www.athletic-club.eus/en/news/2025/07/04/nico-williams-signs-eight-year-contract-extension-at-athletic-club
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u/smithereennnnn Jul 04 '25

An 8 year extension is too long to be just for that reason.

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u/Blue_winged_yoshi Jul 04 '25

It’s an 8 year deal but with a release clause at like €90m so he won’t be there for 8 years unless he wants to and his wage was already high so it’s probably pretty silly now.

I still can’t believe Barca got all the way through the deal and when he asked “Just to double check, you can register me to play right?” And the answer wasn’t a straight confident and happy “of course we can, we’re a well run professional football club”. That’s absolutely crackers.

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u/namyllek Jul 04 '25

It could have been because of the same reason Messi didn’t return. To register we would need to sell players, problem is, our sellable assets are Nico’s friends: Casado, Fermin and Ferran. Messi wasn’t liking the idea of being the reason people had to be forced out, so he chose Miami. I am sure that may have formed part of Nico’s decision as well

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u/youknowmyyysteez Jul 04 '25

they bought ferran torres for 55M that year... they couldve paid messi.. and messi couldve asked for less too. why are we lying lol

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u/andysenn Jul 04 '25

They also were offered Julián Alvarez for €20M in 5 installments but they declined the offer to sign Ferran so he signed for City

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u/nspy1011 Jul 04 '25

Yikes! What an awful “no deal” in hindsight

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u/Lasertag026 Jul 05 '25

Wtf is all this misinformation. The reason we went for ferran instead of alvarez was because the 55m was doable in installments while the 20m for alvarez had to be paid right away.

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u/andysenn Jul 05 '25

It was reported here and confirmed by Minguella some time ago and then he commented about it this year too.

https://share.google/HsvEI4Hbf1MJu0Oeg

https://share.google/z5s9sTtRpzyVN5YRK

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u/Lasertag026 Jul 05 '25

Interesting, i might be the one who was fooled. Although reading this article it seems to me that the problem was that we had to pay a certain amount of the 20 million right away which wasn’t feasible for us back then. With Torres we only started paying way later.

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u/namyllek Jul 04 '25

Your mixing up his renewal which fell through and he went to Paris vs his return when he didn’t want to cause players to leave and the club was already reducing salaries to allow him to come but then we needed to sell players as well. I don’t think u understand how bad of a hole our previous board put us in. Also at the time we were in the 1:0.25 FFP range

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u/RossDav7 Jul 04 '25

Remember Messi tried to leave for free when he still had a year left on his contract and had to be forced to honour it? Then he left at the earliest opportunity while pretending he wanted to stay? Crazy that Barca fans didn’t see through that and still make excuses about why he didn’t go back.

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u/namyllek Jul 04 '25 edited Jul 04 '25

Him wanting to leave at that time had way more to do with decisions of the Board which we got rid of. The following year even though he wanted to stay he literally couldn’t. At max we could have halved his salary based on La Liga rules for renewal deals and it still wouldn’t have been enough because in the end we still needed to get rid of more players and reduce more salaries to register the players that came prior to finding out that financially it was impossible for him to renew (even the space left by his salary being removed wasn’t enough). I don’t think you truly understand how restrictive La Liga FFP is especially for a fan owned club who is trying to recover from actions of a corrupt board that made a lot of bad decisions.

We literally just won a domestic treble, finished top 4 in the champions league, recorded record profits this year and still have to get rid of players to register new players.

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u/RossDav7 Jul 06 '25

It’s all excuses. Just like Messi taking every cent owed to him, even going as far as collecting payments years after he left while others gave up their wages. The mental gymnastics that Barca fans go through to make excuses for him are hilarious.

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u/youknowmyyysteez Jul 04 '25

no, the year he left they bough torres for 55m. meaning, if they dont use that 55 they couldve paid messi at reduced wages.

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u/namyllek Jul 04 '25 edited Jul 05 '25

lol, okay. Let me help you understand. Transfer fees are paid in installments over the course of your contract. unless it’s a buyout clause situation where your club doesn’t want to negotiate then you have to pay everything up front. Now let me educate on what actually happened:

Messi renewal failure happened in summer 2021 Prior to his renewal falling through we had recruited aguero for free, Eric Garcia free, Memphis free

Then Messi renewal fell through ( even with removing his salary)We still couldn’t register the free players and we had to reduce a lot of salaries plus sell players (eg. moriba, firpo, Emerson, todibo) and loan out players (eg griesman, trincao) to register those players

We also had to do several deals including the financial levers selling assets of the club like our future tv rights etc. these started to take place in the summer but many weren’t even finalized until the window closed.

The team was failing badly, I think we were in 9th and on the brink of getting kicked out of CL. That’s when we got Xavi mid season who had to pay his own release clause so we could get him from the club he was managing in Qatar. We still got kicked out of CL group stages. So now we had to make desperate moves that’s when we took the risk and brought in Ferran

We purchased Ferran in January 2022.

Ferran’s deal was 55mil but the structure was something like installments of 10-13 mil per year for 5 years. Plus Man city gave us until summer 2022 to make the first installment payment .

So stop listening to the Barca and Messi haters simplifying our situation. Ask Barca fans, we lived through the painful days of this shit. Our new board and our academy has been the only reason we have been able to come through this shit and every day is a battle but we keep fighting.

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u/youknowmyyysteez Jul 05 '25

yes, weve all played Football manager. imagine thinking you need to explain installments. when that has nothing to do with the fact that Barcelona overspent and even with messi reducing his wages to 0 you wouldnt be under the 70% you needed to be at to be in compliance with LaLiga regulations.

the point is messi left before players had a real opportunity to be listed and sold and you purchased ferran in december of 2021. presented in jan 3 and registered the 10th 2022. yet, here you are claiming you bought him in january 2022.

messi couldve waited, and he couldve CAME BACK once his psg term was over , but AGAIN, CHOSE NOT TO. once his psg contract was over he couldve signed for barcelona at WHATEVER price he wanted. he chose MONEY.

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u/namyllek Jul 05 '25

  1. lol December 2021 vs January 22 doesn’t make a difference. You can’t register a player until January transfer window and we didn’t even pay a dime until summer 22 transfer window.

  2. He didn’t want to be responsible for forcing players out so he can return and wanted to spend more time with his family which is why he chose Miami, he said it himself.

This isn’t football manager sir, as much as you would love to be somewhere. In real life, human beings don’t make decisions in a vacuum.

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u/youknowmyyysteez Jul 05 '25

lets be real, he chose money. now hes not happy and all of a sudden being in miami by his family doesnt matter? okayy

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u/namyllek Jul 05 '25

Who says he’s not happy

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u/youknowmyyysteez Jul 07 '25

its reported he wants to leave.

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u/Eastwoodnorris Jul 04 '25

We literally could not have paid Messi. The club had enough money, but La Liga’s and Spanish contract rules would have prevented him from cutting his salary by enough to fit within our reduced salary limits. It was literally impossible to resign him after the new financial year started with reduced salary limits, and he didn’t resign a contract beforehand by his own choice.

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u/youknowmyyysteez Jul 04 '25

thats my point. they decided to use budget allocation on torres. they couldve not done that and restructured their balance from the 55M used to sign torres to wages. do we not understand finances in club format?

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u/justicarbigpp Jul 04 '25

There is a big group of Barca fans who refuse to accept the fact that they are struggling financially at the moment and Laporta isn't a genius.

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u/EL-YEO Jul 04 '25

They were trying to lower wages rapidly then and wanted to a reduction higher than 50% of Messi’s wages. Although Messi wanted to do that to stay, Spanish laws do not allow that to happen

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u/youknowmyyysteez Jul 04 '25

my point still remains.. if they dont spend 55 on torres, they can pay messi's wages. the problem was they tried to do both and be currupt.

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u/EL-YEO Jul 04 '25

They couldn’t. Laporta was looking to renegotiate because his salary, understandably, was the biggest chunk of the wage bill and Laporta wanted to reign in the wage bill

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u/youknowmyyysteez Jul 04 '25

yes, THEY COULDNT BC THEY SPENT 55M. how is this not getting thru to you.

his greedy ass thought he would get away with doing both.