2023-06-21 15:45:08
BarcelonaBarça has secured the yes of Ilkay Gündogan to strengthen the squad for next season. And it’s no small thing: the German midfielder has just won the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Champions League with Guardiola’s Manchester City. Essential piece and captain of the set citizen in the best exercise of his history, he has decided to change his mind this summer and start a new sporting and personal adventure in Barcelona, a city that has enchanted him for years. Gündogan, who will be 33 in October, had a proposal to extend his stay in England by one more year, but he has finally decided to accept the agreement for three seasons (the last one, optional) that Barça, that he will not have to pay a transfer fee (but a signing bonus), he has put it on the table.
It is not the economic amounts of the offer that have made the heads of what will be the second Barça signing of 2023/24 dance. Nor has he suffered from the possibility of having to fight for a place in the lineup with well-prepared youngsters like Frenkie de Jong, Pedri or Gavi. What has made Gündogan nervous is the same thing that dissuaded Leo Messi from his dream of returning to Barça. The German, like the Argentine star, suffers from the Blaugrana salary cap, which will be exceeded throughout the summer due to the lack of short-term asset solutions (leverages) and the uncertain horizon that exile in Montjuïc entails.
Unlike Messi, however, the until now disciple of Guardiola will indeed accept the guarantees that Mateu Alemany gives him to be registered in the League. The solution proposed by the Mallorcan executive, who has traveled to Germany to seal the agreement according to progress giantsis that if there are no exit movements that could facilitate his registration in the official competition, Gündogan will receive financial compensation and will be able to manage his future with another club.
With the German, the love story in the Barça key comes from afar. From when he played with Borussia Dortmund, in fact. At that time, the entity had closed its arrival in the summer of 2015, after touching the sky in the final of the Champions of Berlin, but Luis Enrique Martínez stopped it because he preferred to incorporate Arda Turan in that position. Now, after the footballer has become a reference in the Premier League, Xavi Hernández has played a crucial role in convincing him. L’Egarenc has spoken several times in recent months to make him the creative midfielder with arrival that frees Pedri from being the only one in the squad capable of fulfilling this function.
Remote medical for Gündogan
That the signing of Gündogan is in the final stretch is not only demonstrated by the trip from Germany to German lands and by the optimism that sources of the negotiation convey to ARA. This newspaper has also been able to confirm that the player has undergone a medical examination monitored by Barça’s medical services to check his physical condition. Above all, how he has evolved from the compression of the vertebra that kept him out of action for more than a year when he was playing for Dortmund and from the rupture of the cruciate ligament in his knee that he suffered in 2017. This season the German, whom Xavi sees capable of playing in all midfield positions, has played 47 official matches for City and scored 11 goals. Undisputed headline numbers for one of the best playmakers on the continent.
“We’ve been trying to strengthen ourselves for a long time and the market is responding well. That’s all I can say. People want to come to Barça. I can guarantee you that, at this point, world-class players prioritize coming to Barça “, declared Joan Laporta this Wednesday afternoon at an institutional event. No explicit reference to Gündogan, but implicit.
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