Barcelona are licking their wounds after missing out on another teenage talent in Lucas Bergvall. The 17-year-old Swedish talent elected to go to Tottenham Hotspur instead of the Blaugrana in the final hours of the transfer window, after Barcelona had been confident of sealing the deal. It unraveled in particularly painful fashion for the Catalans, less than a week after Xavi Hernandez had announced his resignation.
Bergvall will earn more money at Spurs, as will Djurgardens, and he is expected to get more game time in the first-team in London early on too. There are a number of factors that took him towards that decision, including the advice of his family, turning down his dream move in the process.
Barcelona feel they did everything they could, and that ultimately money talks, however as Matteo Moretto points out on The Daily Briefing, the emergence of Spurs for his signature appeared late in the game. Had Barcelona wrapped up negotiations sooner, following a pursuit that endured at least two months, then they might not have had to compete with Spurs at all.
It’s been a feature of Barcelona’s transfer dealings of late that the players they want are revealed to the media long before they sign, and these transfer sagas tend to last some time. It does allow them to apply pressure on other clubs, but also allows other teams more time to manoeuvre, as was the case with Bergvall.
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