LALIGA SANTANDER
Ansu Fati’s number 10 Barcelona shirt is not scoring in the club store
Then current number 10 shirt has almost no demand among the fans, who instead go for for Gavi or Pedri.
Historically, the number 10 jersey has always been the one with the highest popularity among the fans. Both adults and children go to the stadium with the name of their idol on their backs, proud to have the best player in the world in their ranks. For more than a decade, that was Lionel Messi, who monopolised a great majority of shirt sales in the club, a huge distance ahead of the rest of the squad. Before Messi, the number 10 was still the number at Barça, with Maradona, Romário, Ronaldinho all wearing the famous shirt.
The club, in a move of sound judgment, considered two summers ago that the player who was best placed to take over the number 10 was Ansu Fati. The young talent had become one of the great jewels of football; even the captains of the squad gave the green light to the decision.
However, in just over a year and a half, football has not moved in a linear direction. A plague of injuries have cut short Ansu’s meteoric career and have clearly set him back among the ranking of the fans.
‘We don’t have it in stock’, says Barça employee
A visit today to the official FC Barcelona stores confirm that there is hardly a single mention of the young striker, with Lewandowski, Pedri and Gavi shirts the most sought after. Ansu’s 10 is neither in the Camp Nou store nor in Canaletas, the two biggest that the club has, making it clear it is not top of the sales list. In fact, in the Camp Nou shop, there is only one mannequin with the number 10, but it is part of a squad arrangement, as a promotion for the fourth kit.
“Right now it is not even among the six best sellers”, a store worker who preferred to remain anonymous, explained to AS. “If you want an Ansu Fati shirt, you have to ask for them to specifically print the name because we don’t have it in stock,” he explains.
The best-seller in Barcelona
The best-seller in recent weeks is, perhaps unsurprisingly, that of Gavi, after recently taking on the famous number 6. “It’s crazy among teenagers”, followed by closely by Pedri and Lewandowski. “Ter Stegen, Frenkie and Araújo also have their moments,” the same employee points out.
For the club it is an embarrassment to have the mythical 10 locked away in a cupboard and as such, solutions to the problem are being looked at within the meeting rooms. Barça’s marketing department is very interested in a change to relaunch the product.
And in the corridors of the sporting side of things, although still said in hush tones, the trust in the player is not endless, and even less so if the alarm bells continue to ring regarding Jorge Mendes and the interest of various Premier clubs.
- More detail: Ansu wanted by Manchester United
LaLiga Santander 2022/2023
| Classification | PTS | WM | TM | LM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Barcelona | 53 | 17 | 2 | 1 |
| 2Real Madrid | 45 | 14 | 3 | 3 |
| 3Real Sociedad | 39 | 12 | 3 | 5 |
*Data updated to date Feb 11th, 2023