He has a low offer from Barça. Too low to continue. But Sergio Busquets has not yet responded to that proposition elaborated by Mateu Alemany, the football director of the Barça club, in need of lowering the unbridled salary mass of the squad. ‘Busi’ ends the captain’s contract on June 30 and has not said anything about whether he will continue next season. Doubts about his future are growing, no matter how much Wishi, his coach and former teammate, does not stop proclaiming that he is an indisputable pillar in his current sports project. And also in the future.
But ‘Busi’ is silent. He plays and shuts up. He does not say anything. The season is over and he maintains the secrecy that characterizes him. He is 34 years old and looks forward to the big decision that will define the end of his sports career: continue at Barça or explore new adventures, either in the United States MLS or in other soccer markets. “Let’s see how the season ends”, Xavi acknowledged while insisting that “Busi is being very important and transcendental in the game and outside where he is an example as captain and a mirror where all his teammates can look at themselves”.
“I have already told him many times that I want him to continue, but I understand it. This year if everything goes well he can go with titles and he would leave at a very good time”
Xavi, coach of Barça
It has been the coach himself who has uncovered the mystery that hovers around the midfielder. “I have already told him many times that I want him to continue, but I understand him perfectly”, Xavi admitted. “This year if everything goes well, he can leave with titles and he would leave at a very good time”, added the coach.
Xavi’s precedent in 2015
Busquets would leave as Xavi himself did in 2015 where he endured another year at the Camp Nou. He was also the captain, but he had a secondary role in Barça’s triplet led by Luis Enrique on the bench, with Messi, Neymar and Suárez transformed into the trident of happiness.
“It’s difficult, it’s difficult. I also doubted at the time and I even went away winning the treble because I wanted to stay to continue winning titles”, recalled the Barça coach before the duel with Girona. “I will insist that he continue”, he has later sentenced. “But I had that doubt, I understand him perfectly.”
But not everything depends on Xavi’s will. He is in the hands of Busquets, also subject to what happens this summer in sports planning, where Barça is obliged to lower, and substantially, the wage bill. The captain is one of the best paid in the squad.
The rush of the club
Related news
Now, the offer that has been on the table for a few weeks goes in that direction of strict cuts to fit it into the new framework that Joan Laporta’s board of directors is preparing. “His decision for him is very difficult,” Xavi confessed. It is so difficult that, for the moment, Busquets does not give any clue about his future.
And the club, meanwhile, needs to know as soon as possible if it will continue because that conditions its plans to rebuild the squad, especially in that strategic position where the departure of Busquets would force important decisions to be made to find him a replacement outside (Zubimendi, from the Real Sociedad would be ideal, but it is too expensive = or at home.