Barcelona’s election contest has produced an early, long-term approach aimed at Manchester City’s striker rather than a near-term transfer plan. According to SPORT, V\u00edctor Font sent two members of his team to Manchester City’s hotel in Madrid this week to open discussions. Carles Planchart and Xavier Aguilar met City chief executive Ferran Soriano and sporting director Hugo Viana, and were photographed leaving the venue.<\/p>\n
SPORT’s account says Erling Haaland featured in the discussions. Font has described his would-be sporting department as “extremely active” and “meeting with clubs” to assemble options for Hansi Flick. The ambition is not to prise the player away immediately. Haaland signed a 10-year contract in 2024, has 363 career goals at the age of 25 and is valued by Transfermarkt at $230.6 million.<\/p>\n
What Font appears to seek is a formal advantage: a preferential understanding that would place Barcelona at the front of the queue should Haaland ever become available, even if that opportunity arises years from now. The timing is tied to Barcelona’s presidential vote on March 15, when Font and Joan Laporta will compete for the job.<\/p>\n
Any contact that took place with Manchester City has not involved Haaland or his camp, according to his agent Rafaela Pimenta. “We have a lot of respect and admiration for Barcelona, but there hasn\u2019t been any contact whatsoever regarding a potential transfer,” she told La Sexta. “The player renewed his contract a few months ago, he\u2019s very happy at Manchester City. Everything is going very well for him and we really have nothing to discuss about a transfer when everything is so good at City.”<\/p>\n
Pimenta, who inherited Mino Raiola\u2019s client list, has previously emphasised players retaining control. “I don\u2019t like it when the player has no freedom to decide,” she said. “I have done all the contracts in this agency in 25 years. All of them. There wasn\u2019t a single time when a player said \u2018I want to go\u2019 and they could not.”<\/p>\n
Haaland’s past moves were defined by release clauses: a $24 million clause took him from Red Bull Salzburg to Borussia Dortmund in January 2020 and a $63 million clause was triggered by Manchester City two-and-a-half years later. At City he has won two Premier League Golden Boots and helped the club to the treble in his debut season; he sits 87 goals short of Sergio Ag\u00fcero’s club record of 260.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Font’s team met City executives in Madrid as Barcelona aims for a preferential path to Haaland. 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1017,1163],"tags":[983,1047],"class_list":["post-8317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barcelona","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}