It is the second time that Barcelona has tried to sign right-back João Cancelo. The first, in January, could not be. In fact, there was not even a negotiation with Manchester City. Yes, an exchange of unfriendly statements between Xavi and Guardiola that seems to be history. This time, Barça is closer to being able to close the arrival of the 29-year-old player to cover the always pending right side.
The agreement must be closed this week, Thursday being today the key day in the negotiations that are in the final stretch. If nothing goes wrong and as sources from the Blaugrana club point out to this newspaper, the player will arrive on loan until the end of the course with a purchase option that ranges between 25 and 30 million and that will become mandatory if Barcelona It meets a series of variables, such as overcoming the group stage of the Champions League. Barcelona and Manchester City will share the payment of the player’s file, with Barça being the club that will assume the largest part.
Xavi learned all the details of the operation yesterday afternoon. After a holiday, the coach went to the sports city to lead the training session with all the players except Araújo and Íñigo Martínez, who were injured. Precisely the latter is one of the players who are pending registration along with Marcos Alonso and the goalkeeper Iñaki Peña. It is expected that this week the three can be registered in LaLiga before the game that Barcelona will play against Villarreal on Sunday at the Estadio de La Cerámica (5:30 p.m.). To achieve this, Barcelona is waiting to enter 20 million euros this week from the lever that it closed with the German fund LIBERO Football Finance AG which, together with the private investment advisers of NIPA Capital B.V., have become new partners of the Barça Vision platform by purchasing 29.5% of its shares for 120 million euros.
The three parties agreed that Barcelona would enter this figure in sections. When closing the deal, the sale of 5% of the shares was executed in exchange for 20 million euros. This figure together with the departure of Ousmane Dembélé, which represented an income of 35.4 million, served to register Gündogan, Ronald Araújo, Abde, Sergi Roberto and Oriol Romeu.
The Germans will disburse the other 40 million remaining until reaching 16% of the shares (8% of the 24.5 of Orpheus Media and the other 8% of the 24.5 of Socios.com) that allow Barcelona to increase its income in two tranches 20 million in the next nine days, before the summer transfer market closes. 20 million are for the aforementioned pending registrations of Marcos Alonso, Iñigo Martínez and Iñaki Peña and the remaining 20 for Cancelo. Unless there is some more departure from the Barcelona attacking ranks, Barça will not sign any striker to replace Dembélé. Ferran Torres continues to train in double sessions at the sports city ready to offer the best version of him. Top scorer of the preseason, he also scored against Cádiz. For his part, Ansu Fati’s father met with Jorge Mendes on Tuesday in Lisbon. The plan continues being almost the same because although Ansu Fati wants to stay and Xavi counts on him as a revulsion, the player wants to be more of a protagonist.
Everything indicates that Barça will not sign another medium either. This last vacancy will be filled by Fermín López, the 20-year-old subsidiary player who impressed during Barcelona’s tour in the United States and who has been entering the league squad. Not like Clement Lenglet. The central defender, who is still being pressured to find a way out, still does not enter into Xavi’s plans. He rejected a proposal from Saudi Arabia. Specifically, Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr offered him a salary of 10 million euros net per season and another 9 million euros to Barcelona for the transfer. But Lenglet considers that it is not yet the time to go to Arabia and continues looking for a European destination. However, no one assumes his salary that this course represents a cost for Barcelona of more than 16 million euros.
