BARCELONA – Ilaix Moriba He will not train under Ronald Koeman until the player’s representatives abandon their intransigent position and agree to negotiate the renewal on the terms offered by Mateu Alemany.
The new Barcelona football director, whose work continues to be remembered in Mallorca and Valencia, has been given freedom of action by Joan Laporta to cut as much as possible, and beyond, the salary mass of the two professional squads (first team and subsidiary) and the new contract of the youth footballer who catapulted Koeman to the plane last year has become the paradigm of this new reality.
Ilaix is training with the subsidiary and will not have space with the elders until his case is solved. It is even speculated that if the case continues, the season could begin with the youth team. If their agents wanted a pulse, Barça has responded with a bombardment. So much so that it could even be understood that the club is willing to put it on the market.
One year after finishing his contract and becoming the youth with the highest salary in the history of Barça (in 2019 he signed three years for a total amount of more than 1.5 million euros, as well as a commission to be distributed with his agents of more than two million), Ilaix’s advisers wanted to start an exponential contract, growing and starting at two million euros that has run into the club’s refusal.
On June 17 there was the first, and only, face-to-face meeting between Alemany and the player’s representatives. The club transferred their offer to them, they took it reluctantly and a few days later they answered negatively. From there … Silence. And that silence from Ilaix’s agents, seen as a way of putting pressure on Barça, was reciprocated in the same way: silence at the Camp Nou offices, where on Friday, June 9, Ilaix was informed that the preseason would begin with Barça B Without further explanation.
From here, the unthinkable. Barcelona is no longer that club devoted to the demands of its footballers and Mateu Alemany has recovered an old and forgotten figure in these tasks. Yes, Johan Cruyff. The sacred cows are the sacred cows (and they have an obligation to continue to prove it), the middle class is the middle class and the juniors, the newcomers, the newcomers who enter from below, must earn their money in the field. Not in two months or six, in two seasons at least.
The Ilaix case is somewhat reminiscent of what happened in May 1990 with Luis Milla, the first ‘4’ catapulted by the legendary Dutch coach and who, already international, demanded a substantial improvement in his contract, threatening his representative Miguel Santos with taking him away of the club through its termination clause, which was 2.1 million euros.
Cruyff’s response was sounded: “Bring the money and leave. Matter solved. “And Milla, on July 23, 1990, signed for Real Madrid, which paid what was stipulated in the clause.
Neither Alemany is Cruyff nor Ilaix has reached, for the moment, the consideration that Milla had in the Barça first team. Moreover, if the youth today still does not give his arm to twist and does not renew, from the month of January he will be able to negotiate with any club and leave for free in June 2022, a scenario that Barça fans do not even want to imagine but to which the The new soccer director does not seem to worry more than necessary.
Barça, recovering in a certain way the forms of Johan Cruyff, intends to establish tight contracts as far as fixed salary is concerned (considerable discounts compared to what is signed now) and variables, bonuses, for performance and titles with which to reach and even exceed what they may have previously signed.
Ilaix Moriba and Alejandro Balde are the cross and the face of this new reality. The first one is there, incredulous he and his agents (who continue without giving their arm to twist) seeing themselves separated from the first team; the second, who was also surprised on Friday by sending the subsidiary until they agreed to negotiate a contract under the club’s prism, already working with Ronald Koeman after his agents, by order of the boss Jorge Mendes, attended in 48 hours to the demands of Alemany.
Thus, less than a month after the start of the League and less than six weeks after the transfer market closes, no one is able to guess what the future will be of a youth called to take over the world in Barca and who no longer knows he knows if he will stay in the club.