Barcelona preparing final assault to sign Manchester City defender

Barcelona‘s key ambition this January transfer window is to sign Eric Garcia according to a report in Diario Sport.

Ronald Koeman is said to believe it’s essential that the club move to strengthen the defence, with the final assault on the Manchester City centre-back’s signing expected next week.

Barcelona are already in advanced negotiations with Garcia, a process that began last summer only for the lack of an agreement with City to scupper a deal.

He’ll sign a four-and-a-half year contract if he arrives in January or a five year deal if he comes in the summer when his contract with City expires.

The idea for Barcelona is to get Garcia to sign a pre-contract with the club on January 1st and once that’s secured try to bring him in this winter by securing a deal with City.

City don’t want to lose Garcia and have tried everything to get him to stay, even offering him significantly more money to stay in England than return to Catalonia.

Garcia, however, is said to be intent on returning to the club he left in 2017 and winning a starting role in the heart of their defence.

Koeman has been deploying Ronald Araujo, Clement Lenglet and Oscar Mingueza at centre-back since Gerard Pique‘s injury, but Garcia is expected to be good enough to make the spot his own.

Barcelona want to agree a low fee with City to compensate them, with the English club expected to include a percentage of any sell-on fee in an agreement.

The negotiations could happen soon but Barcelona will have to wait until the election of their next president on January 24th to confirm the deal as the managing committee can’t sign off on any potential transfers.

Tags Barcelona Eric Garcia
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