Barcelona lowball Man City for Joao Cancelo

Stuart Telford

• 1 Oct 2023 12:28 BST
• 3 min read

Barcelona and Manchester City have agreed a fee for Joao Cancelo which is less than half the price tag the English champions had slapped on the Portuguese full-back last year.

Cancelo fell out with City manager Pep Guardiola last year and was farmed out on loan to Bayern Munich. They elected not to make his deal permanent, though, and he returned in July.

Cancelo fell out with Guardiola last year after he was dropped in favour of more defensive full-backs like Kyle Walker and Nathan Ake, and the coach later said he would have been happy for him to leave, even for Manchester United.

READ: Guardiola would have let Cancelo join Man Utd

Barca gave both a way out on transfer deadline day, signing the Portuguese on loan. But they didn't have the funds to make the deal permanent, and his future remained up in the air until now.

Barca's cut-price fee

"Barcelona have agreed a cut-price £24.3 million fee with Manchester City to buy Joao Cancelo," reports The Daily Star's Harry Pratt. "City wanted closer to £55m for Cancelo, who had spent the second half of last season on loan with German giants Bayern."

Cancelo is valued at €42.4m (£36.8m) by FootballTransfers' in-house algorithm, so Barcelona have done a fine bit of business, if not quite half-price.

READ: Why Barcelona could face bankruptcy despite profits of €300m

Cancelo has hit the ground running at Camp Nou, with two goals and an assist from his five La Liga games despite lining up on the right of a back four.

Whether Barca can raise the funds to secure Cancelo's services next summer remains to be seen. They have also committed to paying Athletico Paranaense €40m for Brazilian prodigy Vitor Roque, and remain more than €1 billion in debt.

The club recently posted after tax profits of €304m, however, with the Spotify sponsorship and recently agreed La Liga TV deal proving particularly lucrative.