In recent months, Barcelona have been working on agreeing new contracts with several first team players. Gavi and Pedri are currently in talks with the club’s sporting department, and this is also the case for Ronald Araujo, whose continuity at the Catalan giants is less assured.
Like Gavi and Pedro, Araujo sees his current deal expire in 2026. However, while talks over a new contract have progressed well in recent weeks, there is uncertainty about his future given that he attracted interest from the likes of Bayern Munich and Manchester United earlier in the year.
Given that Barcelona are currently pursuing a deal to sign Jonathan Tah as a free agent next summer, there is a chance that Araujo’s renewal becomes less of a priority, as per Diario AS.
However, it is more likely that Barcelona aim to offload at least one of Eric Garcia or Andreas Christensen next summer, given that they are both lower in the pecking order than Araujo, who should be making his return from injury in the next couple of weeks. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how his contract talks go over the coming months.
Araujo has been injured multiple times and missed considerable time over the past three years while at Barca. When healthy he’s one of the better CBs in the world, but he’s not always healthy. Adding Tah protects the club in case he’s injured again and allows for rotation to keep him healthy. Much like the situation with Dani Olmo not being the only quality number ten, Tah would allow for little to no dropoff should he be rotated in or be needed as an injury replacement. Barca are thin at CB, and Inigo Martinez cannot be counted on to play as many minutes as he has this season, two years in a row. Having both Tah and Araujo makes complete sense and does not create an either/or situation for the club at all.