5 of the most positive changes made at Barcelona in the last decade

Barcelona are again on a high after their win in El Clasico

The last ten years really have been sensational if you’re a Barcelona supporter with the Catalans exercising their dominance worldwide on multiple occasions. Three Champions League wins, two trebles... the list of accolades and the incessant desire of a once-in-a-lifetime crop of players is endless.

Though this is the era of Lionel Messi, who stands alone as arguably the greatest to have ever played the game, Barcelona are not a one-man team. So what have they had to do to drag themselves out of the doldrums and bring them to the pinnacle of world football?

Let’s take a look at five of the most positive changes.

#1 Putting a sponsor on the shirt

Having a short sponsor wasn’t popular with supporters, but it was necessary

There won’t be too many Barcelona supporters that will necessarily agree that having the sponsor on the Blaugrana is a positive move. The Catalans were a team who, for 110 years resisted the filthy lucre on offer, for a chance to keep the shirt ‘clean.’

The club was lauded for their tie-up with Unicef, the first name ever to appear on Barcelona’s shirts but the tide turned when first Qatar Foundation, then Qatar Airways and, from 2017/18, Rakuten will have all seen their brand displayed.

What this conveniently bypasses, of course, is that the likes of Neymar, Luis Suarez and others would not have been able to be kept at the club without that revenue stream.

Between MSN alone, the trio command somewhere in the region of €75m per year in salary. That money doesn’t grow on trees. In order to keep Barcelona competitive and able to sign the best players, a shirt sponsor was a move that had to take place, like it or not.