Deco's Plan B and a new mission for Flick

BarcelonaMarcus Rashford is Barça's second signing for the 2025-26 season. The 27-year-old English striker arrived in Barcelona on Sunday night and underwent his medical this Monday, the final step before the club can confirm his signing. He arrived from Manchester United, due to a lack of official approval, on loan until the end of the season, and the Catalans reserve a 35 million euro purchase option. The player and President Laporta will hold the official signing ceremony on Wednesday, the day he will also be included in the list to travel to the Asian tour of Korea and Japan.

Barça has been cautious. The Nico Williams case is too recent to have made the same mistake twice. So nothing was a given until Rashford received the medical clearance. However, with the English player, everything was different, because this time he wanted to come and Manchester United was delighted to find him a way out. Only the official announcement and the photo with the president are missing, which has been postponed until Wednesday due to scheduling issues, according to Barcelona's offices.

With Rashford comes Barça's second, and probably last, summer signing. He wasn't the most desired option for the sporting directors, but he was the only one within reach of a club that won't have returned to the 1:1 rule until August and still has to work to register, in addition to the English striker, goalkeepers Joan Garcia and Wojciech Szczesny. The club is transmitting peace of mind and guaranteeing that on August 16, in the first La Liga match in Mallorca, everyone will be registered.

Marcus Rashford, before Nico Williams and after Luis Díaz

In the end, Rashford, a 1.85m tall winger with a splendid physique, had always been Deco's plan B. Even before that, Nico Williams, a winger who didn't quite convince the Barça sporting director, partly because of the disappointment he received last summer and partly because this season with Athletic Club has been rather low-key. But when his agent offered his services, president Joan Laporta—who had initially rejected his signing—lit up at the prospect of signing a new media icon and complementing the team with a good friend of Lamine Yamal. Everything that happened next is now history.

The player Barça really wanted was Luis Díaz. The Colombian winger had grown tired of Liverpool and was looking for a way out. But the club grid He wasn't willing to let him go just like that. He proposed a contract renewal, a scenario that implied a win-win for Díaz, since whether he stayed in the Premier League or came to Barcelona, he would end up earning a higher salary. For its part, Liverpool has already made it clear that if he left, it would be for a million-pound fee, beyond the Barça team's realistic means. Finally, the tragic death of Diogo Jota in a car accident made it even more difficult for the Colombian to change clubs this summer.

Negotiations between Barça and Manchester United have been easy. Rashford was an exciting player when he debuted at 18 under Louis van Gaal, but since then, his game has only shone on rare occasions, and Old Trafford has grown weary. The protagonist of several off-field controversies, he spent the last half of the season at Aston Villa, where he scored four goals and provided six assists in 17 games. He wasn't lucky, as he suffered a hamstring injury in April, missing the last four games of the season and being dropped from the England squad.

Playing for Barça is a test for Marcus Rashford

For Rashford, playing for Barça is a test, a new opportunity to shine again in the world of football. What's more, he's in the hands of a coach who specializes in restoring players who seemed to have gone off the rails. In fact, Hansi Flick started this job a few days ago, when negotiations with United were well underway. new or on the right side. This presents a wide range of possibilities for the coach, who will have five key forwards this season – Lamine Yamal, Lewandowski, Raphinha, Ferran Torres, and now Rashford – in addition to Dani Olmo, who can play as a false defender. newDespite the controversy and doubts about whether he will perform at Barcelona, Flick has let the club know he is happy with his arrival.