Barca's embrace of the Europa League comes as they face sanctions for breaching UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations (FFP) again in 2022-23.

Barca's financial decline is a story that has played out in stages, through the huge transfer spending of the last decade, to the acquisition of Romeu with the last bit of money in the recent summer, and now, finally, a reckoning is in the offing.

In July, The Telegraph reported that UEFA had announced that the sale of future earnings would not meet FFP requirements. That line was finally crossed when Barca submitted their Financial Fair Play compliance calculations for the 2021-2022 season. Uefa not only rejected the algorithm, but also fined Barca. Barca's appeal against the €500,000 fine was rejected in November. The club passed financial fair play because the calculations are based on cumulative losses over four years, but that hints at problems ahead.

There is now the first indication that Barca have indeed failed to meet UEFA's FFP requirements for the 2022-2023 season, according to German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, to which Barca have yet to respond. After this week's ruling by the European Court of Justice, Barca's victory in the Europa League is like a bitter dessert.

Only time will tell how much of Barca's income will be, but based on the amount drawn from future revenue sales, it could be as high as 608 million euros. The club has admitted an operating loss of around €200 million in non-compliance with FFP.

If Barca fail to meet UEFA's FFP, a fragile club would be severely hit and would be expelled from the Champions League next season, depriving them of a key source of income. The club is already deep in debt, having accumulated operating losses of around 1.35 billion euros over the years. The new Barca stadium project, Espai Barca, has also committed 1.5 billion euros. The old Camp Nou stadium has been demolished.

Barca still harbors Super League dreams and hopes to wrest power from UEFA, even if that seems like the most unlikely of things. It needs to be reiterated that this is a club that, together with Real Madrid, is trying to lead European football into a new competitive dawn. A new dawn, which includes a new system. Surprisingly, the Europa League is also said to have stricter financial regulation. Barca, along with Real Madrid and their various advisers on the Europa League project, want to teach others what good financial management is and how best to apply it.

The future of the Europa League is unclear, although the refusal expressed across the board by the six Premier League clubs signed for 2021 suggests there may be no obvious path to victory. Its legal affairs are handled by A22 Sports, an advisory firm set up by two American financiers close to Real Madrid president Florentino. Despite the league's apparent fall from power, its 12 original members are still subject to contractual obligations, which stipulate a €300 million exit penalty.

In an interview with Radio Corbe this week, A22 CEO Bernd Reinhardt did not guarantee that the fines would never come into effect. This is at the heart of the rules of the game for the Real Madrid-Barca project, and it is a card they are reluctant to give up. It is embarrassing for the other 10 clubs who have taken responsibility. They have pledged to pay an initial entry fee of €2 million, which some clubs have already seen as a loss.

Uefa's FFP sanctions will now have a profound impact on Barca, with the club having many other problems. Their sad end is of their own making. They tried to destroy UEFA and the competitions under UEFA, but failed. Now it seems that UEFA is coming to deal with Barcelona. This is the result of another miscalculation by Barcelona.