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The footballing world, as well as the other kind, is focused on the World Cup which starts on Sunday and will occupy the minds of fans across the world for the next month. However, that doesn’t mean that the club scene is standing still.
FC Barcelona is about to achieve something they tried for the last year or so, reducing some of the highest-paid player’s salaries. The two players in question are the goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen and the midfielder Frenkie de Jong.
Ter Stegen is at the club since 2014 when he arrived from Borussia Monchengladbach and has become the number one choice for virtually every manager that worked at Barcelona this past few years. He is 30 years old and not among the highest-paid players in the club, but he decided to take the offer at hand for more future financial consideration as well as security, namely a new contract. This season, the German goalkeeper has been tremendous in La Liga keeping a clean sheet in 11 out of 14 matches he spent among the goalposts.
Frenkie de Jong is a different story. He arrived from Ajax three years ago in a big transfer worth 75 million pounds but didn’t fulfill the early promise people in Barcelona expected him to. This past summer he was involved in a potential transfer to Manchester United who was willing to pay whatever Barcelona wanted for the Dutch player, and the Catalan club accepted those offers, but the one person who was requested to do so, refused. It was, of course, de Jong himself.
He didn’t want to move to the Premier League, or at least to Manchester United which is struggling in recent years and is not involved in the Champions League this season. The saga lasted for the entire summer, the executives from United didn’t want to give up, so they traveled to Barcelona on multiple occasions, but never made it work as de Jong remained firm in his conviction to stay in Barcelona.
The final piece of the puzzle
After he refused to move to Old Trafford, Barcelona tried to force his hand. They requested him to accept the transfer or to take a reduced salary. He refused on both topics.
Barcelona has spent over 100 million pounds on new players this summer, and many were shocked because the club is in a serious debt situation. But, the president Joan Laporta figured out to move around the system, namely the Financial Fair Play of the Spanish league, and finally managed to get important players in like Robert Lewandowski who is La Liga’s top scorer this season.
However, Barcelona barely managed to register new players for the season, and the club is very well aware that the same situation will occur in the winter transfer window unless certain players accept reduced salaries.
As the Spanish media is reporting, de Jong was the final piece in that puzzle.
Barcelona failed to move past the group stages in the Champions League next to Bayern and Inter Milan, but they are doing very well in La Liga taking the top place before the World Cup break. They have two-point advantage in front of Real Madrid with a terrific goal difference of 33-5.
The Spanish league season will continue on the last day of the year.
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