Ronald Araujo will pack his bags this summer. The Uruguayan defender from Barça has accepted a lightning-fast proposal from Liverpool and will go on loan to Anfield for next season. Hansi Flick does not count on him as a starter and the player has considered that the best for him is to look for minutes in another team. The information was advanced by Fabrizio Romano and confirmed by ARA late this Friday.

In a new statement early Wednesday to Thursday, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has for the first time apologized for the "mistakes" made in his intention to partially sell the World Cup and Club World Cup to private investors, but has stated that he will continue to be FIFA president after receiving the support of senior officials in a meeting held this Wednesday in Morocco.

The future of Ferran Torres is one of the hot potatoes that Barça has to resolve before the transfer market closes. The forward from Foios' contract ends on June 30, 2027. With the hype through the clouds for their decisive goal in the World Cup final with Spain, has proposed to improve conditions whether he continues at the Camp Nou after a renewal or moves on this summer, which is the last chance for the Catalan club to get value from a transfer. The third option would be for Ferran to leave for free next summer, with the risks this entails: Barça would not receive any transfer fee, and the player could get injured and be left with nothing, without any contractual link. In any case, no scenario is ruled out at present.

In the two friendlies that Barça has played so far – against CE Europa (4-1) behind closed doors and against Birmingham City (2-2, 3-2) – Ebrima Tunkara has shown why, despite being only 16 years old, Hansi Flick has counted on him for pre-season. Born in Lamoi (Gambia) in 2010, he is the youngest in an expedition where the average age is around 20 years. Ebrima and the Israeli midfielder Orian Goren, 17 years old, are those who have lived the fewest days on their ID cards, but they are two of the great sensations of Barça's successful academy. The African winger has been one of the standouts in the two summer tests that the Blaugranas have played. "Physically he's a marvel. He's fast, strong, scores goals, left-footed, technically gifted... a very offensive player," they detail to ARA from Barça's stay in England.

Gianni Infantino has backtracked on his proposal to create a subsidiary to sell part of the World Cup and Club World Cup to private investors. "After listening to all opinions, it has become clear that the project has created divisions in such a way that, regardless of support, it is no longer in the interest of the objective initially set out," explained the FIFA president in a statement distributed through social networks.

It was a preseason match, just Barça's second –the first in front of a crowd after the 4-1 victory against CE Europa–, but the tiny St Andrew's Stadium in the Bordesley district of Birmingham was packed to the rafters. Birmingham City FC, a historic English football club that will fight for another year to return to the Premier League, hosted the blaugrana team in the reenactment of a match full of history: both had rivaled in the past in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, with the Catalans beating the English in the two-legged final for the edition played between 1958 and 1960.

New chapter in the battle shaking up the world of football. After Gianni Infantino's proposal to sell part of the World Cup and the Club World Cup, which has met with an unprecedented boycott from UEFA, the FIFA president finds himself a little more alone. Carlos Cordeiro, one of the main advisors to the European football governing body and the president's right-hand man, announced his resignation this Friday after disagreeing with the latest decisions made by the world football's top leader.

The 55 UEFA member countries have voted in favour of supporting a boycott of the World Cup in protest against FIFA's proposal to sell stakes to private investors. The announcement comes after the member federations of the European football governing body met remotely. In this way, next year's Women's World Cup, to be held in Brazil, and the men's, which is to be held in 2030 jointly between Spain, Portugal and Morocco, would not include teams from Europe.

The intention of FIFA president Gianni Infantino to partially sell the World Cup and the Club World Cup has shaken the football world and caused an avalanche of criticism led by UEFA, the body that regulates European football. If this Tuesday the British newspaper The Times reported that Infantino plans to sell stakes to transform the World Cup and the Club World Cup into a kind of public limited company and thus allow the entry of private investors, this Wednesday he has taken a further step by sending a letter to the 211 federations that make up FIFA explaining how their budgets would be increased.

Hansi Flick's Barça will continue their preparation for the 2026-2027 season. Still without the bulk of their internationals, the team travels this Monday to St George's Park, the English football team's facilities, and will stay there until August 3rd. Besides bonding, the team will play two friendly matches. One will be behind closed doors, like this Friday's match (4-1) against Europa, and the other will be open to the public and media and will be played on Friday the 31st (8:45 PM) against Birmingham City of the English Second Division.

After almost a decade as Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola decided to stop. "I know it's time," he said, without clarifying the reasons for a decision made with his heart, but also with his head. He still had a year left on his contract with the English club, but in his last renewal, he had already added a possible second course, which was a maneuver to gain time and peace of mind. He had been thinking about stopping for a while, but he didn't want to spend more than half a season with the press asking him if, as it would turn out, the last one would be his final campaign on the bench of a team with which he won up to six Premier Leagues and the first Champions League in the history of the "sky blue entity, among many other titles and records broken in a football as competitive as British. In total, he has won forty official trophies between Barça, Bayern Munich, and City.

Frenkie de Jong, for the moment, will not go to the operating room, even though the worst forecasts about his injury are confirmed. Barça has communicated that the tests carried out on the Dutch footballer have determined that he suffers from a tear of the internal lateral ligament of the right knee. It has been agreed that the player will continue under medical treatment and monitoring, pending his evolution in the coming weeks. In other words, De Jong prefers, for the moment, to avoid the operating room. In this way and according to what this newspaper has been able to learn, the four months of absence that the first examinations depicted are confirmed when, despite having vacation permission, the footballer traveled to Barcelona to undergo tests at Sant Joan Despí to determine the extent of his injury.

"He has enormous speed and a good first touch. Among his strengths, he particularly stands out in one-on-one situations. He is a great forward." This statement by Hansi Flick could be current, but the German coach made it in the summer of 2021, when he called up Karim Adeyemi for the first time and made his debut for the German national team at just 19 years old. At the time, the new Blaugrana attacker was playing for Salzburg – his training had been mostly at Bayern Munich – a club with whom he would begin to establish himself in the elite, before making the move to Borussia Dortmund. Flick has known Adeyemi for many years, just as, before signing for Dortmund in 2022 – when City snatched Erling Haaland from the Germans – he had already been in the orbit of the Blaugrana technical secretariat.

Raphael Dias Belloli, Raphinha, is injured again. In the midst of debate about his immediate future at Barça, the Culer attacker fell in the second match the Brazilian national team played in the World Cup. Same problem, same muscle. In the 40th minute of the duel against Haiti (3-0), he felt a twinge in his right thigh and had to ask to be substituted. There is a tear in the hamstring fibers and he will hardly play again in this championship, although the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) will keep him called up in case they can recover him for the playoffs. It is terrible news for the canarinha and also for a footballer exposed to the benefits of petrodollars.

The signing of Marc Cucurella by Real Madrid has not only caused a stir due to his past as a Barcelona player, but it has also brought to light a list with so few names that it has only increased on two occasions in the last two decades. While it is true that we find notable cases of footballers who, in their professional careers, have worn both the Barça and the white team's jersey – Zamora, Schuster, Hagi, Lopetegui, Prosinecki, Laudrup, Figo, Luis Enrique, Alfonso Pérez, Ronaldo Nazário, Eto'o, Saviola, and Marcos Alonso–, the list of players raised at La Masia who have become professionals for the white team is shorter.

Spain, with four Blaugrana players in the starting eleven –Cubarsí, Pedri, Gavi and Ferran–, was unable to break the deadlock (0-0) against Cape Verde, a country with just over half a million inhabitants. Vozinha was the hero for his team against a Spanish side that, even with the introduction of Lamine Yamal twenty minutes from the end, could not change the outcome of the match.

Marc Cucurella is the new player for Real Madrid. The Catalan full-back, trained at La Masia, will wear white for the next six seasons after a lightning operation worked on in silence by the white club, which will pay 60 million between fixed and variables for a starting player for the Spanish national team who was on the market.

The arrival of José Mourinho at Real Madrid generates a change in the paradigm of the wide range of signings managed and controlled by super-agent Jorge Mendes. The Portuguese representative and problem-solver has operated quite a bit in recent years with Barça, as he maintains a good understanding with president Joan Laporta. This is how, for example, operations such as the landing of footballers like João Félix three seasons ago at the blaugrana discipline can be read. Although it was not a request from Xavi Hernández, who was then still the blaugrana coach, Mendes brought him to Barça with Laporta's approval because the super-agent, in the same way that he unblocks operations for club directors – he has been in charge of solving hot potatoes like Ansu Fati's – also uses his influence to satisfy the wishes of his players.

The interview that Xavi Hernández gave to La Vanguardia during the last electoral campaign bothered Joan Laporta, who was running for re-election, and Alejandro Echevarría, his right-hand man without a position at Barça. The former blaugrana coach had remained silent since his turbulent departure from the club, after having been ratified in his position in a press conference where Laporta even shed tears the day after the sushi night to end up firing him. Xavi ended up parting ways with the president-elect and with Echevarría, who, although in 2021 he was the main supporter of his return, the coach also considers him one of the architects of his dismissal. Basically, he felt betrayed by him.

The duel between the national teams of Mexico and South Africa this Thursday (9 p.m., RTVE) at the Azteca stadium in Mexico City will kick off the World Cup. Millions of fans around the planet will follow the premier competition of national team football, which will extend until July 19 in the format with the most teams (48) in history. It will also be the World Cup played in the most stadiums: sixteen, the majority in the United States, although there will also be three venues in Mexico and two in Canada.