in the summer of Lewandowski’s signings for Barcelona or Haaland for Manchester City, a young Spanish winger burst onto the market to become one of the biggest earners of the year. After a fierce battle between City and Chelsea for Marc Cucurella (24, Alella, Barcelona) Tuchel’s men won the game and managed to sign the Brighton side in exchange for 68 million euros, making the Barcelona youth team the third most expensive Spaniard Of the history.
Chelsea, author of the other two biggest disbursements in national football (Álvaro Morata in 2017 and Kepa Arrizabalaga in 2018, both for 80 million), once again threw the house out the window to solve the crossword puzzle that was forming in defense. Rudiger and Christensen said goodbye to La Liga, Koundé gave them pumpkins, and he has Barcelona trying to take Marcos Alonso away. Tuchel called for more reinforcements in defense apart from Koulibaly (signed from Naples for 38 million) and clarified to the club that the priority was the former Barcelonans, Eibar and Getafe, whose versatility fits like a glove in his game idea. Cucurella plays perfectly as a left winger in the three centre-back defense practiced by the German boss, but he is also capable of playing as a winger in a four-man defense, inside, and this year he made his debut as a centre-back on the left.
Last season, his first in the Premier League after Brighton paid Getafe €18m on the final day of last year’s transfer market, Cucurella was named Brighton’s Player of the Year, who finished ninth, and he was chosen as the second-best left-back in the premiership behind Manchester City’s Joao Cancelo. Having already made his debut for the senior team (he made his debut in a friendly against Lithuania last summer before the European Championship, 4-0), Cucurella adds a new leap in his career that many thought he would not could ever cross.
At just eight years old, the Catalan moved from Espanyol’s academy to Barcelona’s with the dream of one day playing at Camp Nou. An illusion that was close to becoming a reality in 2017, when he made his first-team debut aged 19 at the hands of Valverde in a Copa del Rey game in Murcia. But those seven minutes he played that October afternoon were the only ones he enjoyed with the Barcelona first team. The club didn’t see him ready to succeed Jordi Alba and decided to transfer him to Eibar to sign Junior Firpo. Upon his arrival at the Armory Group, he was sponsored by Mendilibar, who made him one of the mainstays of his team. The coach defined him as follows: “He is neither fast nor strong. All these measurements that we carry out with so many machines do not suit him. He’s a footballer, he’s smart and he chooses well.”
Eibar were delighted with him and decided to sign him for €2m, but Barcelona exercised the option they had and got him back by paying €4m. But again, Bartomeu’s idea was to find a new outlet for him and he gave the side to Getafe, where José Bordalás made him one of his most loyal praetorians in the team that came to play in the Europa League. But Cucurella was still hurt by Barcelona’s lack of confidence. “As a player in the youth team, they don’t give the opportunities they deserve. In football, it’s more important to win than to have patience,” he complained at the time. The Azulón club didn’t hesitate and in 2020 they signed the Catalan for 10 million, this time without a Barcelona buyout.
The Barça club will take a “spike” for the signing of Cucurella at Chelsea thanks to the training rights (around one and a half million), but Laporta and Mateu Alemany know how much it hurts to see how an asset that was the becomes so valuable to them without them being able to make a profit.
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