Revealed: The remarkable reason Barcelona could have claimed 'breach of contract' and ended their £90m-a-year Nike deal, risking a fine 'worth millions'

The remarkable reason Barcelona could have claimed a breach of contract and ended their lucrative Nike deal - and risked a hefty fine - has been revealed.

Nike have supplied kits for the LaLiga club since 1998, almost a decade before their famous maroon and blue shirts included a main sponsor for the first time, but the partnership looked at risk with Barca president Joan Laporta keen to move on.

The deal, worth just under £90million-a-year, has been updated several times and is currently set to run until June 2028. An extension is now likely, however, with Barcelona exhausting all of their options after looking for alternatives.

In recent weeks, Nike delegates arrived in Barcelona to meet with Laporta but, according to Sport, left quickly after disagreements over the proposal.

Puma had also made an offer to the club and Laporta is believed to have been more inclined to accept this proposal instead. In doing so, though, Barcelona risked landing a significant fine for a potential breach of their contract with Nike.

Sport have claimed that Barcelona, scrambling to reduce or avoid any punishment, even looked for ways to show that Nike had breached the contract themselves.

The club are said to have found distribution errors, including an occasion when new shirts were not stocked in stores two seasons ago, to press home their case.

In a curious move, they also accused Nike of failing to take into account the names of Barcelona players - with Robert Lewandowski's jerseys in the spotlight.

The letter W does not exist in some parts of the world and this caused a problem for both Nike and Barcelona with Lewandowski's shirts the club's best seller. Bizarrely, the solution was to use an M backwards on jerseys bearing the striker's name.

This is said to have been one of the arguments Barcelona were drawing up to present to a court although their U-turn has prevented a public stand-off.

A future alternative to Nike may have seen the Catalan giants take the surprise step of creating their own brand to manufacture their kits in-house.

Nike were said to have improved their offer but Puma were willing to pay £17m and £25m more. It is believed that Barcelona will stay with the former after their proposal rose significantly and because of the need to produce kits for next season. 

Sport have reported that the deal will Nike will last another 10 seasons.