Last summer as Luis Suárez and Arturo Vidal were heading to the exit, there was clearly an intention for the club to get younger. Obviously promotions for Ansu Fati, Ilaix Moriba, Ronald Araújo, and Óscar Mingueza were helpful, but the acquisitions of Pedri and Sergiño Dest also made the club younger and raised the overall potential of the team. Yet of all these names, €31 million Trincão arrived from Braga for the biggest transfer fee, and with big expectations.
In just the last week, Jean-Clair Todibo (Nice permanently), Konrad de la Fuente (Marseille permanently), Juvenil A captain José Marsà (heading to Sporting CP shortly), and now Trincão all moved to different clubs. So why would the club that wants to get younger get rid of so many sprite and promising players? The answer lies in the options that the club has. If they are eating the cost of getting rid of Samuel Umtiti and Miralem Pjanić to lighten up the wage bill, that doesn’t help bring any money back to the club. It simply frees up money for later and allows the club to resign a certain Argentine now.
The only players that can bring in money at the moment are those younger players with potential. The difficulty with Trincão, however, is that the 21-year-old so underwhelmed last season that it would be negligent for Barcelona to offload him for a fraction of what they paid for. He did make 43 appearances for the Catalans last season, but two goals and three assists isn’t enough to convince another club to splash major cash on him this summer.
Instead, super-agent Jorge Mendes, who has gotten a number of his Portuguese clients to the Premier League via Wolverhampton, has facilitated a deal to send Trincão to Wolves on a season-long loan with an option to buy. Most importantly, the West Midlands-based club will be paying his salary. Worst-case scenario is that they choose not to purchase him and Barcelona need to evaluate his future again next summer. He does have plenty of potential, but fitting in at the Camp Nou is a very difficult task, and his career still has plenty of promise even if the move to Spain was just a footnote in his journey.
Barcelona’s recent links to Mikkel Damsgaard are a reminder that as promising as Trincão is, there are plenty of mercurial wingers in the world in the case that Barcelona need one. The 21-year-old Dane has been the revelation of the Euros, and that means Sampdoria has slapped a huge price tag on him. It’s never good business to bring in the player that bursts onto the scene at a major tournament, and it’s very unlikely Barça would take that risk (even if they could financially afford it). If Ousmane Dembélé is truly on his way out next summer and Ansu Fati can’t get back to his best, a young winger isn’t out of the realm of possibility. But for Damsgaard, the timing just isn’t right. What’s more, Damsgaard’s breakout at the Euros come off a Serie A campaign where he scored two goals with four assists in 35 appearances.
Dan Hilton is an American journalist, broadcaster, and current Editor-in-Chief of BarcaBlog. Extensive work as a play-by-play broadcaster, producer behind the scenes, and quite average player in his younger years has given him a well-rounded and informative perspective on the sport. Alongside BarcaBlog founder Francesc, Dan started The Barcelona Podcast in 2017
