“Sooner or later I’ll be back,” he predicted. Gerard Piqué Thursday in the video with which he announced his retirement from professional football, which will take place this Saturday after the game Barcelona will play against Almería at the Camp Nou for the 13th round of the Spain League. It was clear that this return to which he aspires is linked to the presidency of the Catalan club. However, it is not the only project that occupies the mind and hours of the 35-year-old defender, who for years has diversified interests and investments.
The first field outside of football where the defender tried his hand was that of real estate investments. In 2009 he founded Kerad Holding, a company that he manages with his father, Joan Piqué, and with which he owns over 50% in five other companies: he owns 100% of Kosmos Global Media and Kerad USA; 64.18% of Kissme glasses; 50% of Inversiones BCN Two & Two and Kerad EB and 22% of Bas Alimentaria.
In the 2020 financial year (last balance presented to the Central Mercantile Register of Spain), Kerad Holding recorded losses of € 2.1 million, after calculating profits in 2018 (€ 24,419) and in 2019 (€ 277,305).
The player also devoted part of his income to the creation, in 2011, of Kerad games, an online game development company that closed seven years later and is in the process of being liquidated. However, in 2021 he once again tried his luck in the gaming universe with the launch, together with streamer Ibai Llanos, of KOI, an eSports team that competes in the Super League of League of Legends.
In September 2018, the defender who won 30 titles with the Barcelona shirt opened with his then partner, the Colombian singer Shakira, the Blue Sport restaurant, located next to the iconic W hotel in Barcelona and featuring a terrace with a privileged view of the Catalan coast. However, in March 2020 the office was closed due to the coronavirus pandemic and did not reopen its doors.
Also in 2018, Piqué acquired 99% of the shares of the modest Football Club Andorra, who at the time played in the fifth division of Spanish football and had a debt of 200,000 euros (huge for an institution of that size). At the end of the 2018/19 season they get promotion to the fourth division and immediately jump to the third, taking the place of the disappeared Reus Sport.
In May 2022, the Andorran club moved to the second division. In this way they became the first foreign team to participate in a professional tournament in Spain. He currently occupies ninth place in the competition led by Burgos and Deportivo Alavés and is only two points from the positions that allow him to fight for third promotion in the first division.
The defender, who took a course at Harvard Business School called “The business of entertainment, media and sports” in 2017, launched Kosmos Global, a holding company dedicated to sports management, media and entertainment, that year. which is sponsored by Hiroshi Mikitani, President and CEO of Rakuten, Japan’s largest online store.
A year later, Kosmos Tennis, one of the holding companies, signed a 25-year agreement with the International Tennis Federation for the development and implementation of a new Davis Cup format. For this it has disbursed 2,500 million euros.
The shares of Kosmos Global have not been without controversy, as in April this year it was learned that they had received a commission of 24 million euros for facilitating an agreement between the Royal Spanish Football Association and the Saudi monarchy to play the Spanish Super Cup in that country for six years.
Until today, Piqué combined these commercial activities with his role as a professional footballer. From Saturday, after the farewell in the match against Almeria, he will start working, slowly but surely, to fulfill that aspiration that formally binds him back to the club: the presidency. It is no secret that you aspire to it. In fact, he made it public in 2016 in an interview with the Catalan channel TV3.
As president I could do very well for this club because that’s what I’m passionate about. My playing career is about to end and the step I would like to take is to become president of Barcelona, ”she warned at that moment. Will you make it?
“He will be the president of Barça, without a doubt”, condemned the president of the Spanish League on Thursday. Javier Thebes, in an interview with Cope radio. “He has three conditions for this: he has been in the club for 25 years, he knows football from the side of the players and he knows the sports industry from the side of the entrepreneur. He certainly he can be a great president for Barcelona “, justified the leader.
For the time being, the defender will leave the club where he started playing football in 1997, when he was 10; from which he left in 2004, to make his first professional experience at English Manchester United, and where he returned in 2008. This separation, when he is averaging a season in which he has played just nine games (only five as a starter) , will be of great help in easing the battered finances of the Catalan institution.
Although the parties have not yet signed the agreement to finalize the contract (which is valid until mid-2024), the Spanish press estimates that the expulsion of the defender will save Barça at least € 50 millionnot a small figure for a club that last year had to juggle to adjust its paycheck to the rules of financial fair play and thus be able to register its reinforcements.
Precisely in August 2021 Piqué had accepted a salary reduction that the institution did not specify in figures (it considered it “significant”), but which, according to the Spanish press, had been 22 million euros. From this, he was expected to charge 80 million for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons.
Although the contract originally contained a clause specifying that the last year of the tie was conditional on the defender playing at least 45 minutes in 35 per cent of the games he was fit for in the 2022/23 season (so far he has not reached that number) , this condition was lifted at the time of the renegotiation in August 2021.
For this Piqué had a guaranteed salary until June 2024, even if it was demoted in the scrutiny of Xavi Hernandez. This is why in Catalonia the player’s gesture of terminating the contract stands out. “Gerard perfectly understands the situation regarding fair play (financial) and the sports salary account. There is a great willingness on his part to help the club, “president Joan Laporta said Thursday.
Along the same lines, Xavi Hernández, who has been Piqué’s partner for seven years, showed up. He had a contract and deciding to leave him is a gesture of greatness. He is a legend of the club and deserves to be recognized as such “, appreciated the TD, who admitted that he had an interview with the defender before the start of the season in which he informed him that it would not be among his priorities to occupy the central back.
I certainly had an important role in his decision, but I have to make decisions for the good of the club. I don’t know if I was fair or not, but I was sincere and honest. I was honest with him and now circumstances have marked that he put an end to all of this. Sometimes this job is unpleasant, you have to make certain decisions with teammates like Piqué or (Dani) Alves ”, complained the coach.
Source: Clarin
