Instead Of Bringing New Ammunition, Barcelona Focuses On Extending The Contract Of Young Players

Pedri is being offered a new long-term contract by Barcelona (Instagram/@fcbarcelona).

JAKARTA - Barcelona are fairly passive in the winter transfer market. Instead of hunting for new players, they prefer to extend the young stars.

Making transfers for now is too risky for the Blaugrana because they have to be frugal in order to comply with La Liga's Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules.

Therefore, Barcelona only thinks about the squad at this time. Several young players are being approached for a possible long-term contract renewal.

Last week, they convinced defender Ronald Araujo to stay at Camp Nou even though the official contract signing had not yet been made.

Araujo's current contract is still valid until June 2026 which was signed in 2022.

Apart from Araujo, Barcelona is exploring the possibility of extending the service period of midfielders Pedri and Gavi.

Both, who both have contracts until 2026, are close to signing a new deal. ESPN reports that Pedri's contract extension will be announced no later than February 2025, with time dependent on when the club decides to finalize the deal.

The Spanish National Team player enjoyed an extraordinary season after appearing to have forgotten the recent injury problems.

Meanwhile, young defender Eric Garcia still has no clear fate. Despite having a contract until June 2026, he could leave the club this month.

Sports Director Girona, Quique Carcel, confirmed her interest in re-recruiting the 23-year-old defender.

"We want to sign him in the summer and our intention is to try and bring him in again."

"However, it depends on Barcelona's realistic condition for us in terms of what we can do," Carcel told DAZN.

Barcelona must be careful about transfers. The reason is, they are facing the problem that befell Dani Olmo and Pau Victor.

The fate of the two is uncertain after being constrained by the registration problem. Olmo and Victor were registered by taking the slot of the injured player, in this case Andreas Christensen, who was seriously injured.

As a result, Olmo and Victor were temporarily registered in the first half of the season.

However, when Barcelona registered them for the second half, La Liga and the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) refused.

The reason is that Barcelona cannot prove that with the presence of the two players they still comply with the league's FFP rules according to the deadline of December 31, 2024.

In addition, La Liga and RFEF said that they could not register the same players for the same season for the second time.

Currently, Olmo and Victor are still temporarily allowed to play for Barcelona while the Spanish Highest Sports Court (CSD) analyzes the case, which is estimated to take three months since early January 2025.