After weeks of negotiating with Barcelona, Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford eventually headed to Aston Villa on loan on deadline day.
The Mancunian dropped a bombshell on the club when he admitted he was open to leaving in January after Ruben Amorim dropped him from the Manchester derby matchday squad.
There was interest from plenty of European sides but the forward made it clear that he was only looking to move to Barcelona.
For the move to occur, the Catalan giants had to make space in their wage bill by moving multiple players on but eventually they failed to do so and distanced themselves from a winter transfer for the Englishman.
Barcelona chased Rashford all through the January window
And the Carrington graduate was forced to head to Birmingham to link up with Unai Emery with Villa having the chance to make the move permanent in the summer.
As relayed by The Peoples Person, the England international is still dreaming of a summer move to the Catalan giants but there might be some bad news in store for him should he eventually make the move there.
As per SPORT, Barca stars were far from impressed with their club’s pursuit of the 27-year-old as instead of rewarding loyalty, Barcelona were ready to use their newfound financial freedom to bring in another star.
Plenty of Barcelona stars have had to forego a part of their wages or have agreed to lower their demands to stay at the club during their difficult financial spell and they wanted to be recognised instead of the club going after another asset.
“According to the program ‘Barça Reservat‘ on Catalunya Ràdio, the decision of the Catalan club to go for the English striker did not go down well with those closest to the players in the current Barça squad, namely their representation agencies and relatives.
“The information from the podcast on current affairs at Barça points out that there was a ‘raise of the hand’ from those around players such as Pedri, Gavi and Araujo, who have ended up renewing in recent weeks.
Eventually they opted out
“It was done to show their concern that the club was going for names like Rashford during a more favourable economic situation after returning to 1-1 with the sale of the VIP seats at the Spotify Camp Nou instead of regularising the situation of the current members of Hansi Flick’s team.
“After expressing this concern, according to ‘Barça Reservat‘, Deco and the sports management focused on ensuring the continuity of the team’s backbone and normalizing the contracts to the club’s current economic situation.”
Eventually, Deco opted to offer contract renewals to quite a few players, who the club were initially looking to offload in order to fund a move for the former United No 10.
The same problem is likely to rear its head again in the summer and it remains to be seen if an approach for Rashford is made. Firstly, the player needs to return to his best in order for such a scenario to even occur.
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Ayantan Chowdhury
Ayantan has worked for 10 years in the Indian sports media industry, writing for the biggest newspapers and websites but his heart was always set on writing about his favourite club. Currently an editor at The Peoples Person. You can follow him on X: @ayantanc_25
