Dani Olmo’s La Liga’s registration as a Barcelona player is set to be temporarily approved by the competition body, meaning he is now likely to make his debut on Tuesday at Rayo Vallecano.
Olmo, 26, rejoined his boyhood club in a €60million move (£50.8m) from RB Leipzig on August 9 but is yet to make an appearance in a Barcelona shirt, with the new league season already two matches in.
Barca’s struggles to meet La Liga’s salary limit has made it difficult for them to register new players, but a surprising development on Monday afternoon appears to have resolved the situation around their big summer signing, at least for now.
A La Liga source said Olmo’s registration was set to be approved thanks to a rule that gives clubs flexibility in case a registered player suffers an injury that will keep them out for four months or longer.
According to article 77 of La Liga’s financial regulations, the affected club can register a replacement so long as their wages do not exceed 80 per cent of the injured player’s. The wage total paid to the replacement player is deducted from La Liga’s next salary limit calculations.
Barca have applied for Olmo to take up Andreas Christensen’s spot in their squad. The Denmark international suffered an Achilles injury last week, with initial estimations of his recovery time put at one month.
The same La Liga source said Barca had provided a medical report on Christensen’s injury and that it met the requirements for this registration rule to be applied.
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However, dressing room sources told The Athletic their expectation was still that Christensen would indeed only be ruled out for one month.
Olmo was presented as a Barcelona player earlier this month but missed the first two games of the season due to their La Liga registration issue (Manaure Quintero/AFP via Getty Images)
Last season, Barca registered forward Vitor Roque for the second half of the 2023-24 campaign in this way, after Gavi suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury.
They also took advantage of the rule this summer, registering Inigo Martinez after Ronald Araujo’s hamstring injury at the Copa America, which is expected to keep him out until December at least.
If Barca are successful in completing Olmo’s registration by applying this rule, he will be registered with La Liga until December 31, like Martinez.
After that, Barca would have to register both players again. The registration statuses of Christensen and Araujo will remain unaffected. Whenever they return from injury, they will still be eligible to play.
Christensen’s Achilles injury is related to a long-standing problem, but an issue was identified last week. He was absent from Barca’s squad for their first home game of the new La Liga campaign on Saturday, a 2-1 victory over Athletic Bilbao. That result followed a 2-1 win at Valencia in their season-opener, where he did play.
La Liga highlights they have a medical panel, formed by four independent doctors, which guarantees there is no arbitrary decision in that regard.
Those independent doctors are the ones entitled to assess every specific case submitted to La Liga and, after analyzing it, they decide if the injuries meet the criteria for Article 77 to apply.
According to La Liga sources, one of the doctors has made himself ineligible and was not involved in the decision-making on Christensen’s case as he formerly was a Barcelona employee.
During the 2023-2024 season, eight La Liga clubs used that same article with 12 different cases of long-term injured players.
(Top photo: Manaure Quintero/AFP via Getty Images)
