It’s interesting that a lot of stories this summer have revolved around the big clubs raising funds by selling all of their fringe players, but there’s a serious flaw emerging in that plan.
Firstly it’s not clear that any team will have the resources to make signings this summer, while there’s no guarantee that the player will want to go.
Ivan Rakitic is a player who probably doesn’t have a long term future at Barcelona – he’s getting older and he’s bad for slowing the play down or playing the ball backwards, while Barca have often looked to counter attack or get the ball forward more quickly at times under Quique Setien.
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As a result, he’s often scapegoated by the fans and it looks like he won’t be a regular starter going forward, so you could understand if he wanted to go somewhere else as he approaches the end of his career.
A report from Marca has suggested that he’s not looking to go anywhere, and he’s told the club this too.
It’s claimed that he spoke to club a couple of weeks ago to say that he didn’t have much to discuss – simply he plans to stay until the end of his contract next summer and that he won’t be going anywhere.
He’s been a key player in the past and you have to think that his wage packet will reflect that, but Barca have a lot of central midfielders and that money could be better used elsewhere in the squad.
Despite that, he looks set to stay so it will be interesting to see if he’s frozen out for the rest of this season in an attempt to get him to move on in the summer.