After losing the League title and Champions League title in the 2016-17 campaign, Barcelona were jolted in the summer of 2017 when their key player Neymar departed to PSG for a world record fee. Usually, on the other end of such mega-deals owing to their history and resources, the Blaugrana coped well, though.
The structure of the club means no one can purchase shares at the club. It's more of a membership model. However, the club is one of the most valuable sides in Europe. Owing to the history of the club, they make quite a lot of money after the sponsorship deals and hence can spend big money in the transfer market.
Over the years, we've seen them spend big money on some of the best players in the world. The Blaugrana spent a club record fee for Philippe Coutinho in the winter transfer window of 2018 and the Brazilian is currently the second most expensive player in club football right now.
The Pep Guardiola era saw Barcelona spend relatively less as they relied on La Masia graduates to win six trophies. However, with the academy chain slowly drying up, with no disrespect to the likes of Sergi Roberto and Gerard Deulofeu who are excellent players in their own right, the club needs to spend big money to compete with the likes of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester City to compete in the UEFA Champions League.
Many would argue that Barcelona's most influential signing of the 21st century was Ronaldinho. Signed for £29.03 million from PSG, the Brazilian was a joy to watch and changed the way how fans saw football at Camp Nou.
Barcelona have a history of signing world-class Brazilians -- Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Neymar and more recently Coutinho -- so we could see some of the upcoming Brazilian stars clamouring to earn a move to Camp Nou in the near future.
| Player | Transfer Fee |
| Philippe Coutinho | £108 million |
| Ousmane Dembele | £99 million |
| Neymar | £79.38 million |
| Luis Suarez | £73.55 million |
| Zlatan Ibrahimovic | £62.55 million |
| Player | Transfer Fee |
| Neymar | £199.8 million |
| Luis Figo | £54 million |
| Alexis Sanchez | £38.25 million |
| Cesc Fabregas | £29.7 million |
| Yaya Toure | £27 million |
