NEW YORK – The frenetic last days of European football’s mid-season player trading market – that whirlwind of spending and sales known as the January transfer window – are always full of drama.

Rumours fly. Deals are made. For many clubs, the final hours, which arrived on Tuesday, are spent engaged in last-minute haggling over the prices for new players.

At Barcelona, the Spanish club trapped in a years-long financial crisis, the close of the January window was stranger than usual. While their rivals scoured the market for players, they went to court to keep hold of one of their own.

The crisis was of the club’s own making. Having spent heavily on new talent last summer despite repeated warnings that their spending violated league cost controls, Barca were told by La Liga that they could not register any new players until they could find savings or new revenues.

That did not stop the team from offering a new contract to Gavi, a prodigiously talented teenager who is one of the club’s most valuable assets.

The new contract meant a new, higher salary and, crucially, a new registration with the league. The league balked, and refused to register Gavi. And so Barca turned to a hometown court and, on Tuesday, they got the ruling they sought.

In a statement, the club said they had persuaded a local commercial court to require La Liga officials to register Gavi, an 18-year-old midfielder, before the transfer window closed at midnight.

The court had agreed with Barca’s argument, the club announced, that the league’s failure to register the player would have caused the club “serious, irreparable damage”.

The Spanish La Liga was not represented in the hearing. It said it would study the ruling before deciding the next steps.

“If the court tells us to register Gavi, we will,” a league spokesman said.

“And if there are grounds for appeal, then we will appeal it.”

Should there be a successful appeal, the league would deregister Gavi, according to the spokesman.

The case of Gavi’s new contract highlights the dire financial straits Barcelona continue to find themselves in, even after their president, Joan Laporta, swept back into office in 2021 on a promise to restore the club’s reputation and their finances after a fiscal collapse that had sent Barca spiralling towards bankruptcy.

Laporta managed to raise money quickly. Lots of it, in fact, under a programme in which Barcelona sold club assets – including years of commercial rights – to outside investors. But instead of using that influx of cash to balance the books, Laporta went on a mammoth shopping spree, bringing in a slew of new players.

The acquisitions left the club’s fortunes reliant on sporting success, coupled with the need for even more revenue sources.

The results have been mixed. Barca sit atop the La Liga table with half the season remaining, but a humiliating – and financially disastrous – exit from the Champions League in the group stage has raised new doubts about their financial prospects.

La Liga president Javier Tebas this week offered an explanation for why Barcelona could not register Gavi.

In the league’s view, he said, the new deal would put Barcelona in violation of financial limits when it went into effect.

“The issue of not registering Gavi comes as a consequence of the fact that it is a registration that takes effect next season and has no effect in the coming six months,” Tebas said in comments reported by the Spanish media.

He said Barca’s budget deficit next season would be more than €200 million (S$286 million) based on current income projections, “so it does not seem appropriate to accept that registration”.

With La Liga unequivocal in its refusal to bend regulations to allow Barcelona to register any more players, the club’s board took its plea to the local court.

If the ruling stands, La Liga’s decade-old fiscal regulations, which had been drawn up with the clubs’ input in an effort to reduce volatility, would be rendered unenforceable, with teams able to bypass the regulations by challenging them in civil courts. NYTIMES