The honorable Jutglà says goodbye to Barça

I had the option of continuing one more season at FC Barcelona and also being able to join another project (.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
26 May 2022 Thursday 22:28
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The honorable Jutglà says goodbye to Barça

I had the option of continuing one more season at FC Barcelona and also being able to join another project (...). I take this opportunity to thank the sports management and the board of directors for having taken my wish into account”. This is how Ferran Jutglà (Sant Julià de Vilatorta 1999) said goodbye, with a letter on social networks, from Barça. The striker, who has shone with the subsidiary and who fulfilled the first team, is finalizing his departure to Bruges. It is estimated that the Blaugrana club can pocket around six million for the sale of him. "Football takes many turns and of course I leave the door open to return in the future to wear a shirt as important as Barça's in two or three seasons," added the attacker. The club had already informed him that they did not have him for the first team, and Jutglà decided to look for another adventure.

Every time he scores a goal, he puts his hands together and forms a triangle. He represents his house. His family, his friends and his dog. He has dedicated his goals to all of them since he started at Vic Riuprimer and also during his time at Sant Andreu and the base football of Valencia and Espanyol. This season he has repeated that gesture 21 times in an official match. 19 for the goals he has scored with Barça B and which have made him the top scorer in the 1st RFEF and twice more with the first team.

As a child, Ferranet, as his relatives call him, dreamed of being an elite footballer. "Can you imagine that one day we play in the First Division?" He would always say to his friends with a ball at his feet on the Sant Julià pitch. “We met in the afternoons to play soccer and also to run. He has always taken great care of himself”, says Joel Arumí, a lifelong friend who currently plays for Atlético de Madrid B.

Ferran had a long way to go to achieve his dream of debuting in the First Division. But he was always persistent. After training at Vic Riuprimer, Espanyol had their eye on him. It was David Fernández, a former Espanyol base football coach, who brought him into Infantil A perico. “We went to see him play against Barça. He seemed very good to me. He played with white anklets, red and white shirt and black pants. And all the balls went through him, ”says Fernández, who became one of his best mentors not only at Espanyol but throughout his career.

His path was not exactly pleasant. Espanyol stopped counting on him after his time as a cadet, also Damm. But Ferran did not give up his dream of him and he did not drop the rings to start again at Vic in the first year of youth. His parents, who had a family business – two pastry shops that did not work well due to the economic crisis – were always an example for the footballer, who learned to solve problems with effort and work. "I think you have to put him as an example because he has overcome all the difficulties," Fernandez insists. The Bellvitge Unification captured him in his second year of youth. “I went with a coach by car to Bellvitge but halfway through the season that coach left. And so every day he took a train to go and come back. It's three hours of travel a day. But he did it with great pleasure, ”says Fernández.

The following year Ferran signed for Sant Andreu. In the quatribarrat team, in the Juvenile Honor Division, he had David Prats, Toni Lobo and Sergio García as coaches, now in Xavi's coaching staff. It was Fernández again who recommended the three of them to have Jutglà. “I told them that if they were able to get along with him, he would give them a lot. So it was. They even made him debut in the first team”, he recounts. In the second section of that same course, Valencia noticed him. It was the first time he left home. He had a bad time and came back.

Espanyol signed him for three years to loan him out again to Sant Andreu, who was coaching Mikel Azparren at the time. The coach was already clear about his potential and Jutglà was a starter at one of the best Sant Andreu in memory. He made enough merits so that, now, Espanyol had him. Jutglà scored seven goals in his first year with the subsidiary and five in the second, in which his teammates elected him captain. One of those goals was scored at the Johan Cruyff in the derby with a kiss included in the shield. Espanyol decided not to renew it. And Barça appeared. It was the head of the FC Barcelona observer department at the time, Àlex Garcia who, with the support of the subsidiary's former coach, Garcia Pimienta, insisted that the Blaugrana team sign him. “He was a footballer that we had very controlled. He was free. I met with his agents in a bar in Cornellà and there we began to negotiate”, says Àlex Garcia. "He told me that he had the option of Barça and it seemed like a good option," Fernandez insists. The player has been happy in his year as a Barça player. He has jumped. His adventure continues. Probably in Belgium.