BARCELONA – Barcelona closes the winter market next Monday without making any addition to the roster for the first time in the past four years, and with the only last-minute move to send Jean-Clair Todibo from Benfica to Nice, then rule out the signing to close. Eric García, for whom both the president of the management company Carles Tusquets and the election candidate Víctor Font fought and whose negotiations with Manchester City could not be held due to the refusal of Joan Laporta.
Thus, the signing of the young Catalan center-back will remain in the hands of the president who emerges from the March 7 elections who, like Laporta and the other candidate, Toni Freixa, will always have the option to withdraw. freedom with the letter and despite the fact that since Víctor Font’s candidacy this Monday, it was considered a strategic mistake not to carry out the operation.
In this way, Ronald Koeman will close the season with the same team that started it, with the exception of Carles Aleñá, who left Getafe on a loan basis in early January.
After refusing to leave as Brazilian goalkeeper Neto asked for, the club worked until the last minute on loan from Matheus Fernandes, also Brazilian, who arrived in the summer after his loan to Valladolid and played barely 17 minutes since the season started during the Champions League match that Barça defeated (0-4) at Dynamo Kyiv.
After Barça attempted its (https://espndeportes.espn.com/AdminMonitor/nota/_/id/7429654/matheus-fernandes-barcelona-koeman-salida) transfer in September, it intensified contacts in recent weeks in view of which Koeman informed him that he would not have minutes in the first team. Barcelona received a number of proposals from Brazil, mainly from the Guild, which the player turned down because he was only willing to leave Camp Nou for a loan to another Spanish club or, ultimately, agreed to close the season at Barcelona B, an option that was discarded if the subsidiary had no free chips.
BOUNCED BACK
In this way, the only operation Barcelona carried out on the last market day was the agreement with Nice for the loan from Todibo, whose adventure at Benfica has resulted in a sovereign failure.
The 21-year-old French center-back has barely played two games for Benfica, injured from the start and from then on from the zero confidence that Jorge Jesús, the team’s coach, had in him, to the point that he does. for weeks he wanted to return to Barcelona.
Koeman reiterated last Saturday that Todibo was not in his plans, something the club had already communicated to the footballer some time ago and in recent days has been in talks with Nice, ranked 13th in the French league and in which he will play the central team on loan. until the end of the season.
The agreement between the two clubs stipulates that Nice will take care of the proportional part of its file until the end of the season and that it will then receive a non-mandatory purchase option of 8.5 million fixed euros that can go up to 15 for a series. of variables. In that case, Barça would also reserve 15 percent of what the French club had introduced in a future transfer of the player.
TO ZERO, AFTER FOUR YEARS
This will be the first season since 2016-17 that Barcelona will not include a single player in the winter market. The club’s alarming economic crisis and the command of a board of directors with no ability to decide without the approval of the candidates for the election were central to this vacuum.
Last season, the Barça club set up in February and took advantage of Dembélé’s long absence, Martin Braithwaite, from Leganés and for whom he paid 18 million euros. Jeison Murillo (1.2 million) and Kevin-Prince (Boateng (1 million) arrived at Camp Nou on a loan from Valencia and Sassuolo in January 2019, while Todibo (1 million) signed with Toulouse for six months before becoming a contract. terminated.
The big waste took place in January 2018, when Barça signed the Colombian Yerry Mina, from Palmeiras and for which he paid 11.8 million euros, and Philippe Coutinho, from Liverpool and for whom he made an initial expenditure of 120 million euros with the variables already paid has currently risen to 145 million.
Of all those referred to, only Braithwaite and Coutinho remain at Camp Nou today, although it is no secret that the Barça club would happily accept offers for both of them, a demonstration of their lack of skill in entering a market of which, from a sporting point of view has not achieved any performance.
Before that, Barça had not gone to the winter market since January 2011, when, under the leadership of Pep Guardiola, they paid three million euros to PSV Eindhoven for contracting the Dutchman Ibrahim Afellay, whose performance as a Barça player was also a fiasco. of injuries