Barça finalizes the signing of Joan Garcia

BarcelonaBarça hopes to close the signing of Joan Garcia this week. According to ARA, the club has received a positive response from the Espanyol goalkeeper to become the first confirmed signing for the 2025-2026 season, in which Hansi Flick's team will defend their triple national crown and try to overcome their Champions League trophy. Negotiations between the parties have been ongoing for several days, and time has always been on Barça's side's side, which believes the player from Sallent, a product of the Blanquiazul youth system, could have ruled out going to the eternal rival city from the first moment. As the days have passed, not only has this not happened, but the option of staying at Barcelona and in La Liga has ended up prevailing over offers from Premier League teams such as Newcastle and Manchester City -BK_SLT_LNA~ If nothing goes wrong in the next few hours, Joan Garcia will commit to a contract with Barça. Espanyol, therefore, will enjoy his professional prime at the new Camp Nou, where he hopes to share a generation with other talents such as Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsí, Pedri González and Dani Olmo. Deco. Aside from striving for bigger goals, Joan Garcia will also increase his salary. At Espanyol, he was far from the top salaries in the squad, and at Barça, he will debut his status as a millionaire player, although still quite far from the top of a ladder topped by Lewandowski and Lamine Yamal.

Whether the deal becomes official, something the club expects this week, depends less on Joan Garcia's willingness than on the guarantees the goalkeeper receives regarding two variables. On the one hand, the current Blanquiazul player wants coverage in case there are any unwanted problems with his registration in La Liga. And, on the other, he would like more certainty about his role. He has recently experienced the years spent in the shadow of Diego López and Fernando Pacheco and wouldn't want to return to playing in dribs and drabs.

Be that as it may, Barça has accelerated its move for Joan Garcia because it understands that it is a market opportunity that it cannot miss. In the offices of Sant Joan Despí, the professional decline of Marc-André ter Stegen and it is understood that having the best goalkeeper in La Liga for 25 million euros is too tempting to ignore. Furthermore, it is hoped that Wojciech Szczesny will accept the offer to renew for another year after having performed well above expectations during Ter Stegen's long-term absence, who will be informed that will no longer be a starter in the most important competitions Because the club's focus is on rejuvenating the goalkeeping position (Joan Garcia just turned 24). The German, the team's first captain, is the last survivor of the Champions League title Barça won in Berlin in June 2015.

A very painful escape for Espanyol

Espanyol assumed Joan Garcia's departure this summer was a given. In fact, they had already budgeted for it to restore normalcy in the salary cap calculations. What they didn't expect at the Cornellà-El Prat offices was that the Béziers goalkeeper would pay the 25 million release clause to join Barça. The decision would mark a turning point in the relationship between the two clubs, which today remains nothing more than cordial, and will break the hearts of an entire generation of parakeets. The departure is on par with that of Ricardo Zamora at the beginning of the 20th century and reopens a trauma that would later be rekindled, albeit to a lesser extent, by Canito, Urruti, and Miquel Soler. In recent decades, it had become common for Barça to take talent from Espanyol's youth system, but they had never touched their first-team role models. In fact, it's been much more common for the Perico team to sign, and often turn into idols, players with a Barça past. Iván de la Peña, Juan Verdú, Sergio García, and Martin Braithwaite are recent examples of this trend.

Once Joan Garcia's signing for Barça is 100% confirmed, the race to register him will begin, a process that is not guaranteed at this time. According to the figures handled by La Liga, the Blaugrana club is overpaid. Therefore, and as has recently happened with Olmo and Pau Víctor, patience and fine print are key. The Blaugrana club will have to complete extraordinary financial transactions, including player transfers, to make room for the new and exciting acquisition. Joan Laporta's hand is broken.