Joao Cancelo spent the previous season on loan with Barcelona and the Catalans are trying to bring him back to the club once again.
Cancelo’s relationship breakdown with Pep Guardiola has impacted his career at Manchester City and it’s pretty evident that he has no future at the Etihad Stadium.
Even though Joao Cancelo has three years remaining on his contract, MCFC are willing to send him out permanently. Barcelona, however, will not be able to afford a permanent move this summer which is why the Spanish side is working on another loan deal with an option to buy at the end of the 2024/25 season.
Joao Cancelo might end up remaining at Manchester City:
Barcelona’s new manager Hansi Flick is very clear that he wants Joao Cancelo on board before deadline day but there’s also a reasonable chance that the right-back might have to remain in England.
Firstly, according to a report in SPORT, the Portugal international earns around €14 million per season at Man City but he will have to lower his wages quite a bit if he wishes to join Barcelona in the coming days.
Barcelona are ready to offload their high earners just to be able to balance their books and so in such a scenario, there’s no way Laporta can afford to pay a premium package to Joao Cancelo.
Secondly, as per the rumours, Barcelona do not want to pay any loan fees for the full-back and even though Man City want Joao Cancelo off their books, it still remains to be seen if the PL side agree to this or not.
The two clubs are ready to make the deal happen but there’s still a fair amount of negotiations to be done, concerning the financial aspect of the move. And if these clauses and conditions are met, only then will Joao Cancelo return to Camp Nou.
Does the full-back have a future at Man City?
Last week, Pep Guardiola had hinted that Joao Cancelo might still play for Manchester City but in the same breath, he also made it clear that the Portugal international could also leave on loan.
“He’s training with us,” Guardiola said on Friday. “We will see, maybe stay, maybe go on loan. I don’t know yet. He’s training with us, behaving really well in the training sessions. He loves to play football. We will see.”
Cancelo was an important player for Manchester City in 2021 and 2022 but the right-back has not played for the club in over 18 months and it’s very hard to see him being reinstated in the current City squad.
