Barca News
The transition that Barça is going through after deciding the club unilaterally that it would not renew Leo Messi when everything was agreed is being hard in many aspects. His goodbye was traumatic and in no way helped Joan Laporta to give hope to the members and the fans again last summer when he opened the door to his possible return. Nothing is the same since then, but the club tries to look forward.
The proof is that he bet on Ansu Fati so that, from the 21-22 campaign, he wore the number that the Argentine left without an owner. That was a huge responsibility for the youth player, who did not have the regularity or the necessary luck to start honoring the trajectory of that shirt. Neither that first year nor last season, which ended with his loan to Brighton.
His departure caused the ’10’ to become vacant, a situation that Barça wants to remedy for the next year. It is not just about occupying one of the mythical bibs of the soccer world, which also, nor is it about raising your head after the extraordinary stage of Leo Messi. The objective is, in addition to emotional, economic. And it’s a t-shirt whose commercial potential is enormous. It is by itself already related to Barça, but its value, they understand, grows exponentially dressed by the right player.
From there, a new owner is sought and the options, today, are several. There is no unanimity within the club nor in the locker room and, in the background, it will depend on several factors that will end up being decisive in choosing the new heir of the ’10’.
The Lamine Yamal option
He is, without a doubt, the natural heir of Leo Messi for many reasons. Out of the quarry, he is a special and differential soccer player whose potential makes him an unbeatable ’10’ number. There are, of course, some doubts about the implicit pressure of wearing that shirt, although there is also the conviction that Lamine Yamal has a personality prepared for it.
At the commercial level, the union of the Rocafonda soccer player with the ’10’ is the perfect combination for his shirt to be sold like churros. And that also weighs given the economic situation of the club. In any case, it is not clear that next season Lamine Yamal may already have a sign of the first team. It will depend on balancing the accounts and achieving the Fair Play that LaLiga imposes for it.
Signing an unquestionable ’10’
Another of the currents that has the most followers is to deliver the ’10’ to a proven soccer player and this is to find that player in the market. In fact, it has a name and surname: Bernardo Silva. The Portuguese wears that same shirt in the Portuguese national team, although in Manchester City he wears the ’20’ because the ’10’ is the property of Grealish.
The problem, not least, is that his signing is very complicated. The soccer player is crazy about playing for Barça, but for this to happen the club will have to solve its economic problems related to LaLiga’s Fair Play. In addition, the Blaugrana entity is not its only suitor. There is also Bayern Munich.
There are other alternatives
Lamine Yamal and Bernardo Silva are the options that fit the most in Barça, but there are other alternatives if they end up being discarded for different reasons. One of them would be to offer the ’10’ to Ansu Fati again, although today it is a very distant possibility because the future of the youth player is not at all clear. His time at Brighton has not been as successful as expected and, when the loan is over, all the options will be valued.
