FC BARCELONA
Which players are missing from the Barcelona pre-season US Summer Tour poster?
Barça’s American tour poster does not include three first team players who may have one foot out of the door at Camp Nou.
It is that time of year when the transfer merry-go-round gets plugged into the wall and starts to spin violently, throwing out waves of anxiety and mistrust along the way. Beyond the confirmation that Barça’s 2023 US tour will be on the West Coast and they will take on Juventus, Arsenal, AC Milan in Santa Clara, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas respectively - oh, and the small matter of a Clásico in Dallas - there is always the curiosity of knowing who appears on the poster announcing Barça On Tour. Are the club winking at you and I?
Are Barcelona hinting at potential departures?
Whether every detail turns out to be true or not, the fact is that the poster may give us certain clues when it comes to Barça’s summer plans. The players that appear on the design: Pedri, Araújo, De Jong, Ter Stegen, Dembélé, Lewandowski and Gavi, seem untouchable in the squad. However, Barcelona’s current number 10, Ansu Fati, does not appear, leaving some to question if it was purely a matter of space on the paper.
Which players are not on the poster?
The faces of Ferran Torres and Raphinha are also not present, and are players who have been linked with moves away over recent weeks, while Dembélé and Lewandowski play a central role on the tour billboard. Also absent is Andreas Christensen, who has had a great season in Spain and continues to also be the subject of transfer speculation.
The poster ‘analysis’ is of course, to some extent, guesswork, but on this occasion it does not seem purely coincidental that players like Ansu, Ferran (linked with Aston Villa) or Raphinha have been left out. While nothing is definitive and the main news story from this poster is that the Barça-Madrid tickets in Dallas are sure to sell-out, it adds fuel to the theory that the devil, or at least the departures, are in the detail.
