Barcelona presidential candidate Víctor Font was the only one of the three candidates to back signing Manchester City defender Eric Garcia in the January transfer window.
That’s according to AS, who say Font had arranged a budget deal with Manchester City’s leadership for the young defender.
Garcia, as you’ll be aware by now, has been heavily linked with a return to Barcelona since last summer, when the two clubs negotiated a deal but couldn’t agree on an asking price.
It was expected that Barca would make a second attempt in the January transfer window, with City open to a sale given Garcia’s contract expires in the summer and he can leave on a free transfer at that point.
It emerged towards the end of the window that Barcelona could have actually secured a last-minute deal, but the three presidential candidates failed to agree on the move.
AS cover that now and say that Ronald Koeman and technical secretary Ramos Planes pushed strongly for Garcia to arrive, with the club short on defenders amid an injury crisis.
Víctor Font backed the Dutchman and, backed by his ‘good relationship’ with the Manchester City leadership, reached an agreement that meant the club would not pay any more than €230,000 until the end of the season.
He then put the deal ‘in the hands of the club’, but his fellow candidates Joan Laporta and Toni Freixa ‘rejected’ the signing so that it would not be an ‘electoral point’ for their rival.
Thus, Garcia ended up staying at Manchester City until the end of the season, a decision that is now haunting Barcelona as Ronaldo Araújo has since suffered an ankle injury.
That means he, Gerard Piqué, Sergi Roberto and Sergiño Dest are now on the injury list while Samuel Umtiti is also unfit at this moment in time.
Garcia then would have been a very handy player to have at this point, but, as has been the problem at Barcelona for a while, politics ended up spoiling things.
