Barcelona finally got away with it and will be able to count on Joao Félix and Joao Cancelo this season. The Barça club managed to transfer both of them this Friday, from Atlético and Manchester City, respectively, in a frantic market closing in which they also agreed in parallel to the departure of Ansu Fati and Clement Lenglet to the Premier League and the transfer from Ez Abde to Betis (for 7.5 million euros) to lighten the wage bill and make room for the two new Portuguese signings.
In this way, Barça closed a market marked again by financial ‘fair play’. The culés have had to take out the calculator once again, they have said goodbye to important players like Busquets, Jordi Alba, Dembélé, Abde or Ansu Fati and they have welcomed other footballers like Gündogan, Oriol Romeu and Iñigo Martínez, before the final fireworks on the last market day.
Barça saved the arrival of the two Joaos for this Friday. Joao Félix will wear the Barça elastic after the Catalans reached an agreement with Atlético this Friday for the transfer of him for a season in which the Catalans will have to take charge of their entire record. This operation puts an end to one of the great soap operas of the summer and complies with the player’s wish, who from the beginning of the summer period made clear his desire to join the entity chaired by Joan Laporta.
That wish was reciprocal with that of the culé president and it has been a matter of much debate in the Barcelona offices. Joan Laporta wanted him at Barça for years and he has never hidden that ambition. “I like it very much,” he came to say last July. On the other side of the coin was Xavi Hernández, who did not trust the Portuguese’s integration into the team and who prioritized other operations such as the right-back, a new attacking midfielder who would fit better into the new game system or even a striker. to unload Robert Lewandowski of minutes at the point of attack.
Finally, the Barça coach accepted Joan Laporta’s demand and Joao Félix will join his fourth club at just 23 years of age. The Portuguese shone at Benfica, faded at Atlético and left many doubts at Chelsea last season. Now he lands at Barça convinced that it is the ideal ecosystem to recover his best version and show that he is still the footballer who dazzled all of Europe and who made Atlético lose their minds, paying out 127 million euros, the most expensive transfer in history. Of the entity.
I cancel, Xavi’s request
One Joao is Joan Laporta’s wish and the other is Xavi’s. The Catalan coach wanted at all costs a guaranteed full-back for the right-handed lane, who had an attacking vocation and who knew perfectly the positional game that is so popular in Barcelona. That player is Cancelo. The Portuguese defender lands in Barcelona after the Catalans reached an agreement in the form of a loan with Manchester City and puts an end to the patches that Xavi has used so much for that demarcation in the last year.
Barça will have to take charge, of course, of the entire player file, something that has only been possible thanks to the endorsement that Joan Laporta presented in the previous days at the LaLiga headquarters. The top Barca president stepped forward with his personal assets in the face of delays in the payment of 20 million euros by the Libero Football Finance investment fund.
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