Joan Garcia’s Barcelona transfer: The inside story and key questions answered

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Barcelona have completed the first step of their succession plan in goal: Joan Garcia has signed from city rivals Espanyol.

Barca met the €25million (£21.4m, $28.8m) release clause in his contract at the end of last week, with further formalities completed since. Now he has been confirmed as the newest member of Hansi Flick’s squad.

Garcia’s transfer is interesting for several reasons.

Not many players leave Espanyol for neighbours Barca — and the decision to do so was not taken lightly. The 24-year-old was also determined to move to a club where he will be guaranteed regular minutes, so what will this mean for Barcelona’s current No 1 (and captain) Marc-Andre ter Stegen?

Then there are Barcelona’s well-known financial issues. After all the drama around Dani Olmo’s registration issues last season following his summer arrival, should we expect something similar to happen again?

The Athletic spoke to several well-placed sources — who preferred to contribute anonymously as they did not have permission to comment — with knowledge of the Garcia transfer to help explain the situation.

Garcia’s sale is the second biggest in Espanyol’s history — only surpassed by the €28million Real Betis paid for striker Borja Iglesias in 2019. It provides a huge boost to their finances. At the end of 2024, they were reported to have debts of €67m. Last summer, they could not afford to pay transfer fees and only signed players on loan.

On a personal level, Garcia will now see his salary significantly increased. At Espanyol, his net yearly wage was around €400,000. At Barca, the figure is expected to jump to around €3m annually.

In terms of the numbers, then, the move looks like a no-brainer. Making the decision to go, though, was a lot more complicated than that — largely because of the nature of the rivalry between the Catalan city’s two La Liga clubs.

Across last season, Garcia faced multiple comments and jokes speculating about a transfer to Barca. The goalkeeper would shy away from them, responding that it was a difficult thing to contemplate given his bond with Espanyol, a club he joined as a 15-year-old.

JOAN GARCÍA. 🧤🔝#LALIGAHighlights | @RCDEspanyol pic.twitter.com/39pSjEfDYJ

— LALIGA (@LaLiga) February 1, 2025

Few players cross the divide from Espanyol to their more illustrious neighbours. That is partly because Barcelona tend to recruit from bigger teams than Espanyol, but there is also the emotional aspect. The clubs’ rivalry is real — despite the fact Barca are fundamentally on a different level in terms of profile — and Garcia will have factored into his decision the knowledge that he will leave behind a lot of disappointed, perhaps even angry, supporters.

Garcia has become the first player to join Barca from Espanyol in 31 years, and just the 15th to ever do so at senior level. He will have been braced for the social impact of that. When announcing his departure on Instagram on Wednesday, he spoke of the “maximum respect for everything I’m leaving behind”. Comments were, perhaps wisely, turned off — on that video and all his previous posts.

He added: “I know that this decision won’t be easy to understand for everyone. I don’t ask you to do so. But I do want you to know that it’s been a decision which I’ve thought about a lot, thinking not only in my career but also in what’s best for the club, for my family and for me. It’s not any old farewell, it’s a stage of my life which ends with the conviction that everything I’ve lived has made me better.”

Garcia does already have several connections at Barca, too. And this also contributed to his decision-making.

Last summer, he was part of the Spain squad that won gold at the Olympic Games’ football tournament, alongside Barca players Pau Cubarsi, Fermin Lopez and Eric Garcia.

Garcia was on the bench as Spain beat France 5-3 to win Olympic gold in August (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)

After the end of the 2024-25 season, he made his first appearance for Catalonia, in a friendly against Costa Rica. The Catalans won 2-0, and their team also featured two Barcelona players in Eric Garcia and Pau Victor. Their club colleague Marc Casado missed out injured and Gerard Martin did not feature as he had been called up by Spain Under-21s, but both were present at the game.

Garcia has received several positive messages from Barca’s dressing room in recent weeks, encouraging him to join them with assurances that he would be warmly received. The relationship between Barcelona’s sporting director Deco and the player’s agents, Juanma Lopez and Andy Bara, has been helpful too.

Bara brokered Olmo’s move from RB Leipzig last summer, He is also the one who brought former Barcelona Atletic (their reserve team) player Mikayil Faye in and out of the club in the past couple of seasons, leaving Barca with a €9m net profit when he left to French side Rennes last summer.

Barcelona were not the only club keen on Garcia, however. There was Premier League interest, too.

The firmest proposal came from Bournemouth, although they quickly learnt they were not in pole position. Newcastle had been monitoring him, but their biggest priority to bolster the goalkeeping area was, and still is, Burnley’s James Trafford. Manchester City also had a look, but with Ederson and Stefan Ortega staying for now, they have not moved for a ’keeper so far this summer.

A year ago, Garcia was heavily linked with Arsenal, but Espanyol demanded they pay the full release clause to let him go, and the clubs did not find an agreement.

Arsenal’s plan then was to have Garcia as countryman David Raya’s backup. After last season, when he was arguably the best goalkeeper in La Liga, Garcia wanted to secure a move to a club where he would play regularly. Arsenal could not offer that. Therefore, they were not in the mix for him this time.

Which takes us back to Barcelona.

Their interest was serious and the club promised him what he was looking for: a guarantee that he could really challenge to be their No 1. This has been an absolute priority for Garcia, and those close to the player believed Barca was certainly the best option he had on the table.

With Barcelona and transfers, however, there are always potential complications.

Last summer, when the deal to sign Olmo was struck, the player’s camp and the club agreed to insert a clause allowing him to leave for free if he was not fully registered by the end of that transfer window. It was an insurance policy for the Spain midfielder to have an escape route in case his eligibility to play was at risk.

Garcia playing for Catalonia against Costa Rica on May 28 (Joan Valls/Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In January, La Liga de-registered Olmo, after concluding Barca were in breach of their salary limit. He was at that point entitled to leave for free, but he stayed and the Catalans ended up being allowed to re-register him after a ruling from the Spanish government in their favour.

Now, with Garcia, sources close to the negotiations between him and Barca say similar assurances for the player have been included in his contract, although the strong belief at the club is that he will end up being registered without any difficulties.

On Tuesday, however, La Liga president Javier Tebas said Barcelona are still not in line with their salary-limit rules.

“Barca need to do some things to register Joan Garcia,” Tebas said. “Not a lot of things, but they know what they need to do in that regard. I am not going to reveal them here. One thing is to make the signing official, the other one is: can they register him?”.

This is all, by now, familiar ground in Barca’s financial world. Because they are spending more on wages than La Liga’s calculated maximum for them (La Liga’s salary limits are worked out according to each club’s income), they will either have to cut their current total or raise new revenue.

Barcelona have actually secured some funds via a few sales this summer. Como met the €6m release clause in the contract of 21-year-old full-back Alex Valle, who had been on loan at the Italian club, while West Ham United’s €39m signing of Jean-Clair Todibo from Nice, following his season on loan, means Barca are set to earn another €7.8m, as they inserted a 20 per cent sell-on clause in the deal when selling the defender to the French side in 2021.

They have also terminated Clement Lenglet’s contract — the defender had two years left on it, and has now joined Atletico Madrid, where he was on loan last season — but still need to do more. Further departures are needed, as well as progress with the Camp Nou renovations to ensure bigger commercial income from the club’s home stadium soon.

Garcia will join the squad on a pre-season tour of Japan and South Korea, but to play in La Liga, the salary limit situation needs to be fixed.

At Barca’s senior offices, this is a move that makes total sense to their eyes: a sensible investment for a top prospect and a long-term replacement in an area where the current starter, Ter Stegen, is 33. He also missed much of last season with a knee injury.

Now the club’s intention is to have an honest conversation with Ter Stegen and try to offload him, finding a good solution for all parties. It won’t be easy, as the Germany international intends to stay and is under contract for another three years.

If he were to leave, Barca would see their wage bill significantly reduced, as Ter Stegen is among the squad’s biggest earners. And they have now secured his substitute.

Expect more to develop on that topic in the coming weeks.

(Top photo: Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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