the who’s who of a fall from grace

BarcelonaAnsu Fati wants to stay at Barça, his dream is to succeed at Camp Nou and his eyes lit up when, at the request of the club and with the approval of the coaches and captains, he was entrusted with inheriting the number 10 left by orphan Leo Messi after his traumatic farewell. Now, two seasons after the Argentine’s departure, his role in the team is far from what the player himself would want, and especially his father. “It bothers me how they are treating him. They give him very few minutes,” said Bori Fati in the morning on the Cope microphones. Statements that have not been liked at all by the noble offices of the Camp Nou or the Ciutat Esportiva. Ansu lives trapped in the frustration of leaving behind the aftermath of the injuries, his desire to be important at Barça and the complexity of an environment that, as his father put it, has recommended him to “change air”. Who are the actors around Ansu’s compromised situation?

Ansu Fati

Barça number 10

He is the first interested in staying at Barça, and he has conveyed this to the club, his father and his agent, the signing Jorge Mendes. He was brought up at La Masia and is at ease in the dressing room, where he has teammates with whom he matched in the lower categories, such as Eric Garcia. But the 20-year-old sees how all the team’s forwards and even midfielders have passed him. This year he has participated in 38 games, scoring six goals and providing three assists. But he has only started on eleven occasions: nine in the League and two in the Champions League (against weak Viktoria Pilsen).

With 1,338 minutes, he is the 18th player in the squad with presence. Fati has started in six of the last twelve League games. He has not scored a goal or provided an assist in these matches. His situation has been around since the beginning of the school year. “Have I been the worst?” he asked, precisely, Eric Garcia when he was changed to Mestalla at game time, in one of the few matches in which he also started. It was day 12 of the championship.

Xavi Hernandez

Barcelona coach

That Xavi trusts Ansu was clear when the coach from Egar took the bench of the first team. He was so eagerly awaited that he played at the first opportunity he got, against Real Madrid in the 2022 Super Cup, despite the fact that doctors and physios still saw him as tender for major efforts, as he had come from a muscle injury. The striker scored against the Whites. At the next opportunity, with the same warning, Xavi put him in San Mamés for a while, but the Cup match went to extra time and Ansu, overexerted, suffered the same tear in his femoral biceps. “They brought him back in a hurry and now what, have they forgotten about him?” questions the player’s father in this regard. The injury that weighs him down today is the muscle, not the ordeal with the knee.

At that point, the footballer refused surgery and opted for a conservative treatment. He would reappear some time later, but neither then nor now has he recovered his previous explosiveness. As a result, his performance has suffered and his minutes are therefore of lower quality. Xavi wants him to be dynamic and asks him to be patient, but he is skeptical of the possibility that he will be as differentiating as in his beginnings.

Mateu Alemany

Director of professional football at Barça

When he arrived at Barça, Mateu Alemany was clear about two things. The first, that the skyrocketing salary of the first team made it impossible for Leo Messi to continue, an electoral promise of Joan Laporta. And the second, that Pedri and Ansu were two footballers who needed to be linked in the long term. In the case of the Hispanoguinean, the director of football even had to oppose selling him in the summer of 2021, a possibility that reached the offices in the face of the impossibility of generating fair play financial not only to renew Messi, but to register the signings of Memphis, Agüero and Eric Garcia.

Ansu stayed and signed a new contract until 2027 with amounts that matched his market value, which at that time was around 100 million euros (currently, according to the specialized portal Transfer market, is 35 million). “He is an alpha priority, like Pedri,” Alemany justified those dates. A year and a half later, the Balearic executive has held this speech with the footballer’s father, who went to see him on Monday morning. For him, Ansu is “Barça’s heritage”.

Bori Fati, Jorge Mendes and Joan Laporta

Father of Ansu Fati, representative of the player and president of Barça

Bori Fati shoots from the right. He broke into the Cope chain without his son’s knowledge. In the same way that on Monday he requested to meet at the Ciutat Esportiva with Mateu Alemany and Jordi Cruyff. In fact, it is not the first time that Bori has presented himself or requested meetings with the sports management. “He likes to be present, he doesn’t stay away. The whole family depends on Ansu,” says a former employee of the club to ARA. The player’s father also meets monthly with Jorge Mendes, who made a significant investment to keep the player in his portfolio, beating him to Rodrigo Messi, after the great irruption of a footballer who broke records of precocity in the Boat.

It was the same circle of 10 who advised him not to go through surgery again after his last serious injury, in January 2022. The advice of the club’s medical services, on the other hand, was for him to have surgery. But Mendes had long preferred to listen to other external specialists at Barça. Now, the super agent is offering him to the Premier League, where Ansu has more of a ticket, and Joan Laporta, given Barça’s situation, would agree to sell him. The president has always maintained a cordial relationship with the Fatis. Ansu has a contract until 2027 and he will have the final say.