Three exits and no entrance. Barcelona's winter market has been quite skeletal, much less bombastic than a year ago when the Blaugrana club signed four players: Aubameyang, Dani Alves, Adama and Ferran Torres, the only one to follow. The Barça squad –and also the wage bill– has been reduced without any reinforcements. And that the sports dome rushed its options until the last day but Barcelona ended up without moving a piece.
Xavi defended at the beginning of January that if he lost a player he wanted a replacement. Later he affirmed that it would not be a tragedy if he did not replace Memphis, transferred to Atlético. On Saturday, with Dembélé's injury, he began to see things differently. And Bellerín's goodbye ended up changing his mind. "With the withdrawal of Piqué and the departures of Memphis and Bellerín, I think that a reinforcement would do us good," he explained.
The first option, knowing that Ousmane Dembélé will be out for a month, was to try to play off Abde, but it was impossible to break the loan contract with Osasuna. So the market was scoured for an opportunity and efforts were focused on a midfielder. Amrabat was the favourite. “May what comes really reinforce. Let's not sign to sign quickly and running. If there is a good alternative, go ahead. If not, we are fine ”, asked the technician.
Training helps to know if something is cooking on the last day of the market. Barça jumped into training without Héctor Bellerín, who had permission to finish closing his future. The player traveled to sign with the Portuguese Sporting Clube, which will pay one million. The winger has barely played 493 minutes at Barça spread over seven games.
Something similar happened at the Centro Sportivo Campini, where Fiorentina trains. In the session there was a weight absence: Sofyan Amrabat. It was his way of putting pressure on the Viola club to accept Barça's offer. The 26-year-old Moroccan midfielder was one of the revelations of the World Cup in Qatar, where he played the entire seven games and came fourth.
The blaugrana offered to pay 3 million for the transfer and include a purchase option of 35 million, something that Fiorentina did not like, who wanted the purchase to be mandatory on July 1 or a transfer now. There had even been direct contacts with Amrabat, who fit the positional and recovering pivot profile. But the negotiation did not come to fruition due to the claims of the Italian club, which even left the Moroccan out of the call for the Coppa duel this Wednesday.
