Ilaix Moriba and Barcelona are in a painful and unfortunate deadlock
By
Dermot Corrigan Aug 25, 2021
129
Ronald Koeman had clearly expected the question about Barcelona youngster Ilaix Moriba’s current situation, and had a long and firm answer ready.
“I spoke with Ilaix two or three weeks ago, more as a person than as Barca coach,” Koeman said at last Friday’s press conference. “His situation is horrible because he is 18 years old, has been able to play for the first team and is the future of the club. And he is not playing, is not with us.
“I know the club wants to offer this player (a new contract). And my advice (to him) is that money is not the most important thing; that is to play games. But the player, and with his people, have decided differently. I am disappointed by this because I believe that in football there is more than contracts. For someone of 18, the most important thing should not be money.”
Barcelona vice-president Rafael Yuste was just as blunt when speaking on Movistar TV before Barcelona’s
La Liga game against Athletic Bilbao on Saturday.
“It is very important that this message reaches all the youngsters at the club, at this difficult moment for the club,” Juste said. “They must realise money is not everything, and they must be excited to play for FC Barcelona. If he (Ilaix) does not change his posture, he has no future at this club.”
Midfielder Moriba has been at Barcelona for over a decade already and has long been tipped as a future first-team star. Koeman used him in almost every game following his senior debut in January last season.
But he was not in Bilbao on Saturday as Barcelona’s midfield was overrun at various stages during a 1-1 draw that could easily have finished 3-3. The teenager was back at home in the Catalan capital, and gave his own response via Instagram: “Thousands of rumours and nobody knows the truth.”
It is a strange situation that is difficult to get to the bottom of.
With just a week left until the transfer window closes, one of European football’s brightest prospects finds himself in a most difficult position. Some around the Nou Camp will say the problem is of his own making, but that is far from the whole story.
Born in Conakry, the capital of Guinea in west Africa, Moriba arrived in Barcelona’s Santa Coloma de Gramenet suburb as a small boy.
After a short spell in neighbours Espanyol’s youth system, he moved to the city’s biggest club aged just seven. He was quickly seen as a future first-team player as he bounded up the ranks, often playing above his age group. By the 2018-19 season, a 15-year-old Moriba was playing for Barcelona Under-19s in the UEFA Youth League, alongside close friend and fellow nationalised Spaniard Ansu Fati.
All who follow La Masia closely, or not even that closely, knew the name Ilaix Moriba.
Manchester City,
Chelsea, Juventus and Borussia Dortmund were among the clubs tracking his progress. Also attracted were Stellar Group, the agency headed by Gareth Bale’s long-time advisor Jonathan Barnett, who represented the teenager in prolonged talks before a new contract was very publicly agreed in April 2019.
To avoid losing such a prospect free of charge the following summer, Barcelona agreed to break their internal wage structure. Still just 16, he now had an annual salary of €2 million and a €100 million release clause.
The club’s hierarchy were not prepared to make the same effort for fellow starlet Xavi Simons, three months younger, who left for more money at Paris Saint-Germain that summer. But how happy they were to have kept Moriba was clear from executives Pep Segura, Silvio Elias, Guillermo Amor and Eric Abidal all wanting to be in the picture when the deal was announced.
After a slight pause in his progress during former Barcelona first-team goalkeeper Victor Valdes’ short term in charge of the under-19s, Moriba kept smoothly moving up. Barcelona B coach Javier Garcia Pimienta was more of a fan, bringing him up to play against grown men in Spain’s third tier. He played for Spain at the Under-17 World Cup in the autumn of 2019, scoring in a group-stage win against Cameroon with the assist by then-Las Palmas midfielder and now Barcelona team-mate Pedri. When he smashed in an 86th-minute volley to secure a 3-2 comeback victory over Llagostera the following March, Moriba had just turned 17, becoming the second-youngest Barcelona B scorer ever.
Koeman spotted his potential as soon as he took over as first-team coach that summer. Moriba trained with the first team through the opening months of last season, and started against Cornella in the Copa del Rey in January. A La Liga debut followed in early February against Alaves, three weeks after he turned 18. Just 29 minutes into the game, he set up the opening goal for team-mate
Francisco Trincao. Although there was also a misplaced pass in his own half just before the hour that allowed Alaves temporarily back into the game.
“We always remember the last thing we did, so I have the mistake stuck in my head,” he said after Barcelona had eventually won 5-1 in the Nou Camp. “But I am happy for the assist, and to have played. I’ve been coming to this stadium since I was small. This is a total dream.”
The dream start to his senior career continued two weeks later when he provided a backheel assist for Lionel Messi to score the clincher in a 2-0 win at Sevilla. His first senior goal came in his third La Liga game a week later against Osasuna, with Messi returning the favour with the assist for the second goal in a 2-0 win and then opening his arms for his young team-mate to jump into.
It all seemed to confirm the hype of the previous years. Koeman clearly preferred Moriba to other options — such as local pundits’ darling Riqui Puig and experienced Bosnian
Miralem Pjanic. Moriba played in 13 of Barcelona’s final 14 La Liga games, made his
Champions League debut in the last-16 second leg at Paris Saint-Germain in March, and also came off the bench the following month in the 4-0 Copa del Rey final hammering of Bilbao.
Although many pundits compared his mix of physical and technical gifts to Manchester United’s Paul Pogba, Moriba himself said his idols were Barcelona predecessors Sergio Busquets and Andres Iniesta.
“Everyone tells me that I look like Pogba and I must say I like it,” he said. “But Busquets and Iniesta were the ones who made me play in midfield.”
This was exactly what the youngster should be saying, of course, and off the pitch, his maturation also seemed to be going to plan. Moriba was taking English lessons alongside his friend Fati, and studying for a qualification in hairdressing as part of La Masia’s rounded education programme.
“One of his brothers was a great player, with lots of potential, but did not progress as expected,” Moriba’s barbering tutor Josep Pons told news agency EFE. “Ilaix is very aware of that. We speak a lot about values, including how to manage success and recognition, something not easy at his age.”
In the background, though, another stand-off with the club’s hierarchy was rumbling on in the background, and about to burst out to wider attention this summer.
Everyone involved knew Moriba’s next deal would be even bigger, including his family and his agents. Having now turned 18, he could get a first-team contract, and move several rungs up the salary scale. This summer was always going to be crucial, as his current agreement ended in June 2022.
Barcelona’s directors and executives are used to dealing with interest in their club’s starlets, going back well over a decade ago to when Cesc Fabregas and Gerard Pique left for England. A more recent development is that the best talents at La Masia are now often represented by the world’s highest-profile superagents. Simons’ move to PSG two years ago, for example, was organised by Mino Raiola. Meanwhile, Barcelona’s ability to meet pay demands has been limited by the
club’s increasingly awful financial situation.
An early sign that things were going to get complicated again with the player’s camp were Catalan press reports last autumn that Rodrigo Messi, Leo’s brother, had become close to the player’s father, Mamady.
The Messi family were also very close to Fati and his father Bori for a while, representing his son in talks with the club, before the Fatis signed with Jorge Mendes’ Gestifute firm last August.
When Joan Laporta’s new board arrived in March, Moriba’s situation was one of the most pressing matters on the table.
The following month, his father told Catalan radio that Manchester City, Chelsea and Juventus had made better contract offers to his son than Barcelona, and pointedly laughed but did not deny when asked whether or not he had spoken to Real Madrid, their arch-rivals. “Money does count, but we want to stay and succeed at Barcelona,” Moriba senior said. That seemed a suggestion that an agreement could be reached with Barcelona’s new hierarchy. But there were further twists still to come.
In late May, Moriba’s break with Stellar was confirmed when he joined German agency Rogon, which represents a lot of Brazilian and German players and has been snapping up young La Liga-based talents this year. Talks continued, with an offer on the table to renew his contract, which the player and his camp did not consider attractive enough.
The tale then took another twist in early July, when Moriba was not called back for pre-season with Koeman’s first team. He was completely on the outside, even as contemporaries from the youth system including Nico Gonzalez and Alejandro Balde got the nod from Koeman. Both were also entering the last 12 months of their contracts this summer, and have gone on to sign long-term extended deals in recent weeks. They are also already repped by mega-agents — Balde is also with Mendes, while Gonzalez, son of Deportivo La Coruna legend and former Spain midfielder Fran, is with Pere Guardiola’s Media Base Sports.
Moriba was by now the only high profile standout “contract rebel” among the club’s young players. The story gained a darker side on July 27 when the teenager himself called out racist comments he had received via social media from Barcelona “fans” who wanted him to accept the club’s offer. Barcelona offered him support with their own social media message but it was a troubling development.
Eventually, a call did come on August 1 for Moriba to join up with Barcelona B’s pre-season preparations under their new coach Sergi Barjuan. However, the very next day, Laporta was very clear in his message that the club would not be held to ransom by young talents or their agents when he spoke to the media at the unveiling of new signing Emerson.
“We will try for this case not to be repeated,” Laporta said. “(Moriba) has a year left and does not want to renew his contract. We do not accept this situation. And we have to act.
“He is a great player. If he does not renew, he knows there are other solutions. We do not want players that are formed here but will not renew with one year left. He has been given opportunities, but the club has to come first and they cannot try and force us like this.
“I would like him to reconsider. I don’t like that he does not recognise what we have done for him. We do not accept him to leave for free (next summer). Whoever wants to leave can do so, but with conditions. Unfortunately, this is the case.”
The deadlock has continued into the early weeks of the new season, with everyone at the club apparently aligned against Moriba. He has not featured at all, even in the B team’s warm-up games, either being left on the bench or just not called up to travel at all. While nobody at the club has openly admitted he is being punished for not renewing his contract, or that this is an attempt to strong-arm him into doing so, that is the very clear impression left by Barcelona’s actions.
“The player is not in the plans of the coach of the first team or Barca B,” says a source. “That could be a consequence of him not accepting the contract offer, or looking for conditions that the club cannot accept, but the club has never said that (officially).”
Maybe they have not spelt it out exactly, but the clear message from Barcelona is that unless Moriba signs the four-year contract that was offered to him in late June, he will not play for the club again. Even if that means he spends the next 12 months on the shelf, not playing for anybody.
This could be seen as understandable, or even noble, especially given the challenges involved for Barcelona’s negotiators in dealing with voracious top agents and hanging onto their best young players.
With the club’s huge debts, they have to turn the money tap off. From this perspective, making an example of Moriba is, in their view, protecting the club’s future.
“Barca figures do not usually talk so strongly, they are marking a red line the club just cannot pass — the club, the coach, the president,” says a source. “If he wants to accept the offer, great, but it (their offer) will not change.”
The player’s stance is also quite logical — he is clearly a special talent who can already make an impact on the first team and also knows he can get more money elsewhere. His current agents only arrived on the scene in May, but within a few months, they were told that no more negotiation was going to be possible.
His camp could also argue that Barcelona’s board found money this summer to bring in established older players including Memphis Depay and Sergio Aguero as free agents. Koeman has been clear he wants a new midfielder and would have signed Georginio Wijnaldum this summer after his
Liverpool contract expired had they not been gazumped by PSG.
It is quite strange that Moriba is the one player being forced into this situation. Other players, from Puig to Sergi Roberto and Philippe Coutinho, also have deadlocked talks with the club over their contract situations. But none of them has been frozen out in the same way. The club’s huge debts mean that they surely should be focusing on youngsters, and developing talents from La Masia is part of the club’s identity.
Moriba, alongside his friend Fati and their fellow teenager Pedri, could be the core of a trophy-winning Barcelona team for a decade or more. But that looks impossible now.
It is a really complex situation, and very unfortunate for all involved.
Even if Moriba was to now accept the terms on offer, his reputation among fans has suffered, in no small part due to the strength of the comments coming from the very top of the club. It also emerged during Saturday’s game in Bilbao that he was planning on switching his international allegiance from Spain to Guinea, the country of his birth. Which he’s completely within his rights to do, but the timing of such a huge decision does not look ideal considering all the stress he and his family are currently under.
Whether this summer or next, he looks almost certain to leave La Liga. Germany’s RB Leipzig have reportedly had an €8 million offer turned down, and other interested clubs are also well aware Barcelona’s negotiating position over a transfer fee this summer is not strong. He and his agents also know that if they wait 12 months, they will have even more options for a free-agent move when the market will have recovered more from the financial ravages of the pandemic.
In the end, though, it is not a happy situation. A kid who has made his home in the Catalan capital, and at the Nou Camp, is now being pushed out. He and his family are well aware of their worth, as shown during their previous contract negotiations. But if they
really wanted to leave, they would surely be gone by now.
“It was a long situation, but my first option was always to stay,” Moriba said in 2019, soon after his current deal was signed. “I waited until the last minute because I wanted Barca’s offer. I didn’t care about the other clubs. I could have left earlier but I preferred to stay.”
Another last-minute agreement looks impossible at this point.
