The “good, pretty and cheap” applied in reverse. André Cury, in his different facets, has been maintaining a relationship of questionable results with FC Barcelona for just over 15 years. There is no Barcelona trench that this skillful representative has not been able to cross, capable of doing business with three presidents as supposedly different as Joan Laporta, in his first term and in the current one, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu. His last operation as an agent was the sale of Vitor Roque for 30 million euros, apart from 31 in variables. The 19-year-old Brazilian has barely counted for Xavi Hernández and Cury is already threatening to sell him to another club. An assignment is not contemplated. It is usually more profitable for representatives.
Cury begins to appear in the Barça orbit with the arrival of Ronaldinho. He is credited with clicking the photograph of Sandro Rosell with the smiling star in 2003 during the electoral process that brought Laporta to the presidency. Rosell had met Cury previously, when the Barcelonan was an executive at Nike.
The paths crossed definitively in 2008 with two operations still remembered today as examples of absolute failure. Cury, then a heavyweight in the Traffic representation agency, sold central defender Henrique and forward Keirrison to Barça in two consecutive summers. The total of the operation amounted to 24 million euros with the consequent commission. Keirrison was never presented as a Barça player and Henrique lasted Pep Guardiola one preseason. After that outrage it is hard to believe why Cury was admitted to the Barça offices again.
Neymar was partly to blame. The extraordinary quality of the Brazilian was the object of desire of Real Madrid and Barcelona and Cury, an unavoidable intermediary to close the acquisition, rowed in favor (as justified) of the blue and scarlet waters. The final amount of the operation has given rise to hundreds of theories but in any of them our protagonist came out on top. His collaboration with Neymar was considered so positively that in 2012, with Rosell as president, he became an employee of the club as the head of scouting in Brazil. As reported at the time by Catalunya Ràdio, the salary to be received rose to 685,000 euros per year, bonus and allowances aside.
The club’s next signing with the Cury seal was a terrible tribute to its origins. Douglas Pereira landed at the Camp Nou, a winger with poor performance who left the club after being loaned for a season to Sporting de Gijón. Its price, 4 million euros
From there, the names linked to Cury combine exorbitant prices for big stars like Coutinho with players who did not even succeed in the reserve team, and even downright grotesque operations. There is a choice but one of the prizes goes to Matheus Fernandes, of whom Cury assured without breaking a sweat that he “had the conditions to be the new Busquets”. Brazilian midfielder, with Koeman he played a few minutes and in Valladolid, where he was loaned, three minutes. He cost 7 million euros and ended up denouncing Barça for unfair dismissal. A global success.
In 2018, Cadena Ser (program What do you play?) revealed that Barça paid 6.6 million euros to Cury, who was still on the payroll, for Neymar’s departure to PSG under a clause in his contract. for which he had to charge 3 percent of an eventual transfer. The club denied the information, alleging that the signing was not closed through a transfer but rather through the payment of the clause, but it could not deny the existence of the agreed three percent.
In 2020, after six years of Bartomeu’s mandate in which Cury continued to earn regularly as an employee while representing players, he was invited to leave the entity with the excuse of a restructuring in the scouting department.
Asked about his close relationship with Barça, Cury proclaims himself a culé and usually says that thanks to him the club has earned tens of millions of euros based on the upward sale of players who cost more when they left than when they arrived, in the case of Neymar. (222 million), Yerry Mina (35) or Paulinho (52), but there is another calculation of a different nature that is easy to make that goes against them. It consists of reviewing the list of 17 players who passed through his hands before landing in Barcelona. How many of them succeeded? How many covered up the possible emergence of La Masia footballers? How did they improve the club’s reputation?
His latest contribution, Vitor Roque.
