Barcelona set to pay defender €600,000 to NOT play for them next season

Stefan Bienkowski

• 31 May 2021 12:58 BST
• 3 min read

Barcelona’s current financial predicament is causing all sorts of issues for the club’s plans in the coming summer transfer window. 

Not only will it severely limited the Catalan giant’s pursuit of transfer targets and limit the club to making free transfers such as Sergio Aguero and Gini Wijnaldum, but it may severely downgrade any offer the club could make to Lionel Messi to get the star player to extend his contract beyond this summer.

As such, Barca fans were left shaking their heads in disbelief on Monday morning when Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo reported that the club were paying for a player to specifically not join this summer. 

The report states that Barcelona have decided to not sign Spain Under-21 international Juan Miranda and will instead allow the defender to join Real Betis on a three-year deal for free. 

Why are Barcelona paying for a defender they don’t want to play?

Because Miranda was a youth player at Barcelona, the club had an obligation to either extend the player’s contract for two years or allow him to leave when his contract expired on June 30. 

However, upon the decision to let him go, Barca will now have to pay compensation of almost €600,000 to the defender as he was technically under contract until 2023.  

As part of the deal, Barcelona will also reportedly be due a percentage of any money Betis make from selling the defender in the future. 

The newspaper also claims that Miranda has impressed a number of clubs since making the step up to senior football at Betis, with Real Sociedad and Olympique Marseille also interested in signing the defender this summer. 

However, after making 25 appearances for the Seville club, the full-back seemed more than happy to continue his development at Betis over the coming years.