Ferran Torres was officially presented as an FC Barcelona player on Monday, following his move away from Manchester City. With the dust starting to settle on the transfer, some interesting details about the deal have come to light.
Fabrizio Romano claims that a 'first refusal' clause has been put into Torres' contract, which gives City an option to match any bids for Torres from potential competitors if Barcelona intend to sell him in the future.
But an even more interesting piece of information came in from Spain earlier today. The ever-reliable Lu Martin on the Què T'hi Jugues radio channel revealed certain complications faced by Barca in concluding the deal.
According to Lu Martin, Barca wanted to include a clause in the Torres deal which could see him move back to City at the end of January if Barca failed to register the 21-year-old into their squad, with the clubs to retry a deal in the summer. City refused to allow such a possibility, with club CEO Ferran Soriano – who personally worked on the deal himself – telling the Catalan side that the forward would be their business following the conclusion of the deal.
Barca need to offload some big names to make room in their wage bill to accommodate the Spain international. Barca found it tough to offload players in the summer, who are currently on high wages, one wonders how they are going to find prospective buyers in the winter window.
Lu Martin also claimed that Barca owed Manchester City (roughly) €1.5million for the transfer of Denis Suarez, a transfer that took place in the summer of 2013. According to Martin, Josep Maria Bartomeu, the then Barcelona President, did not believe that the transfer of Suarez to Villareal in 2015, triggered a clause that owed a percentage of the sale amount to City, on behalf of Barca.
City were convinced that they were owed money by Barca in that transaction, and communicated the same to the new Barca President and his team. One would now assume the amount will be paid in the near future.
This information not only lays bare the dire situation of Barcelona's financial accounts but also puts into question the authenticity of the claims of Joan Laporta who would have everybody believe that there is no problem at Barcelona at all.
On the other side of the coin, the Premier League champions are elated on essentially doubling their profit, on the price they paid, for a player who was at best a bit-part player at City.
Written by: @adwitya16
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