GERARD PIQUE wants to come out of retirement to play for FC Andorra, according to shock reports.
The Spaniard penned his retirement after leaving Barcelona last year and declared on November 3 “there wouldn’t be another team” after leaving the Camp Nou.
Despite that, a sensational report from Relevo has now claimed the 35-year-old wants to go back on this and play with FC Andorra – the team he owns.
However, the financial restrictions and strict rules regarding this make such a situation difficult.
There are two main components to this. The first of which are wages.
Pique could sign himself up to his team, but the valuation of his wages would need to be determined by a La Liga financial committee.
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His retirement at Barcelona saved the club a whopping £44million in the second half of the season.
And the committee will have to decide how much they value, for the purposes of the squad salary cap, how much it will “cost” Andorra to have a player like that.
Usually the committee will instruct a team to pay half the salary the player had been receiving, but with the club’s salary cap at £5.7m a year this would be difficult to justify.
There are workarounds to this, such as a capital increase funded by Pique himself.
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However, once again La Liga’s financial rules would pose an issue in this regard.
The rules indicate a club is only allowed to raise their capital by 25 per cent of the existing business.
New capital injections from other sources would also need to go through checks. once again making life difficult for Pique’s hopes of playing for Andorra.
The club, who currently sit 10th in Spain’s second tier, was brought by Pique’s Kosmos Holdings in 2019.
Then they were just fifth-tier minnows.
But now four years on they one promotion away from being able to duke it out with the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain’s top tier.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
