Four Of Barcelona's Five Summer Signings Now Registered And Eligible To Play In La Liga

Four of Barcelona's summer signings are available to make their La Liga debuts for the club in Saturday's season opener against Rayo Vallecano.

Barcelona spent over €150 million on Franck Kessie, Andreas Christensen, Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha and Jules Kounde this summer despite the club's debts exceeding €1 billion.

Those new players could not be registered straight away though because of La Liga's financial regulations.

Barca needed to free up funding and have since done so with several economic levers, such as selling shares of future TV rights.

Then on Friday the club sold 24% of Barca Studios to Orpheus Media for €100m.

This brought in sufficient funds to allow Barca to legally register Kessie, Christensen, Lewandowski and Raphinha with La Liga.

Robert Lewandowski is set to make his La Liga debut for Barcelona this weekend

IMAGO/NurPhoto/UrbanandSport

But Kounde may have to wait to make his Barca bow.

To register Kounde as well Barca must first reduce the team's wage bill.

Despite Barca's finances clearly being in a very delicate state, head coach Xavi sounded upbeat when he spoke to the media on Friday evening, approximately 27 hours before kick-off against Rayo.

Xavi told reporters, as quoted by Yahoo Sport: "We are working hard and everyone at the club is very positive. Maybe not 100 per cent, but we are optimistic. We'll see.

"The club has signed very well, I am very excited about the players we have signed. We have time until tomorrow and now we are very optimistic."