“We’re back!”
Joan Laporta was in a bullish mood, which is the mood he’s in most days, but especially on days like this. It was the first day of the rest of their lives, a sunny morning in the city. Up in the stands at the Camp Nou were 13,513 people, optimism returning. On the pitch below them, the Barcelona president, who started singing when he was last down there presenting Dani Alves and Xavi Hernandez, was beaming, ready to take on the world. Or so he said.
This was a big deal. Ferran Torres had just joined Barcelona for a transfer fee of €55 million, plus €10m in add-ons. Aged 21 and long seen as the country’s outstanding player of his age group, he’d come from Manchester City, no less. Destined, some said, to lead Spain’s forward line for the next decade, Torres has already scored 12 international goals, including a hat-trick against Germany, at a rate better than a goal every other game. His salary is understood to be structured to reach something the region of €12.5m per year.
It wasn’t the first big signing of Laporta’s second spell at the club, but it felt like it. And it wouldn’t be the last.
That’s what Laporta said, anyway.
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If Torres’ arrival suggested a shift, a signing they could genuinely get excited about — a properly good player they’d persuaded to join and who you could still see there in 10 years’ time — then Laporta’s words shouted about it. So much so that when he was asked about the arrival that would be transformative, the player everyone wants, the signing that would say look at us and guarantee that everyone did just that, he didn’t back down. Could Erling Haaland join too? “Everything’s possible,” Laporta said.
If that sounds a little noncommittal, he didn’t say no, which was entirely deliberate. What he did say was this: “We’re still players in the…
Source : espn
