Fabregas saga may change Barcelona’s transfer policy

Barcelona and Arsenal’s continued involvement in the most frustrating transfer tussle of this summer is resulting in a change of thinking from the Catalans, Andrew McCarten writes.

With the seemingly never-ending Cesc Fabregas transfer saga finally appearing close to reaching its elongated conclusion, President Sandro Rosell and Barcelona may now have altered a fundamental part of their business plan after failing to prize the Catalan native away from Arsenal for such a long time.

Under current Spanish law, many young players have been able to leave La Masia for professional contracts abroad, like Fabregas and fellow Barcelona products Ignasi Miquel, Hector Bellerin, and Jon Miquel Toral Harper, just signed by Arsenal.

This has been labelled by various Barcelona officials as “kidnapping,” “immoral,” “fishing,” etc, and much is made of the “Barcelona DNA” inherent in all those who progress from the youth academy, and how their football education and love for the club leaves a lasting and indelible mark.

Perhaps, keeping in mind the difficulty in bringing the Arsenal captain back to Catalonia, Pep Guardiola’s side have sold three promising young players to major European clubs-Bojan Krkic to Roma, Oriol Romeu to Chelsea and Jeffren Suarez to Sporting Lisbon-however, these sales also include buyback clauses that give the club the right to purchase the player back after a certain amount of time.

This clause was also mentioned in Thiago Alcantara’s rumored move to Arsenal as a makeweight for Fabregas, and represents an interesting and different approach to youth talent in a roster stocked with seasoned talent. Barcelona are so successful on two fronts, namely their current squad and youth development, that it is actually creating problems as there can only be eleven men on the pitch.

The European champions’ squad simply doesn’t have room for the younger players coming through the ranks, with many senior contributors like Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, and Pique still at the top of their game.

By selling the players to competitive clubs like Chelsea and Roma, Barcelona are gaining money in the short term, and have the ability to wait and see if the player thrives with first team football in some of Europe’s toughest leagues. In essence, this can almost be thought of as an advanced sort of loan deal, and may catch on at other clubs in the future.

It is easy to see, for example, Manchester United use a system like this with current players like Federico Macheda and Tom Cleverley, or Chelsea with Daniel Sturridge, although the buying club may not be willing to lose a successful acquisition once the selling club change their mind. The merits of this system remain to be seen.