Oriol Romeus dream move back to Barcelona cost him 500,000

Oriol Romeu may not be a signing that drives Barcelona supporters wild, but his manager is clearly delighted.

When around 50 fans welcomed the La Liga champions on arrival at their hotel in Los Angeles on Wednesday at the start of a four-match U.S. pre-season tour, few were cheering for Romeu. Xavi, though, couldn’t be happier at getting a player he specifically requested to be on board in time for this trip.

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“Xavi is a role model for anyone who loves football,” midfielder Romeu said at his unveiling on Friday at the famous LA Memorial Coliseum, home of the 1932 and 1984 Olympics and three NFL Super Bowls. “I received his call when I was on holiday. He told me they have been discussing my name with the executive board, and that he has decided I have to be the signing for the club.

“I was thrilled with his call. It’s comforting to see a former player such as him speaking so highly of you. Now it’s time for me to repay Xavi’s confidence with performances on the pitch.”

The 31-year-old was the player the Barcelona manager wanted to replace his fellow club great Sergio Busquets at the base of the midfield, and he told the Camp Nou power brokers as much. “Xavi made it clear to us that Oriol Romeu was his preferred choice,” Barca president Joan Laporta explained at the same event.

Yet as much as Romeu’s homecoming after 12 years playing mostly in England and then elsewhere in Spain may appear something of a fairy tale for the La Masia graduate, the path back home has not been smooth, with tension arising between Barcelona and Girona during the negotiations.

Sources involved in the deal — like all others mentioned in this article speaking on condition of anonymity to protect their positions — have revealed that, to facilitate its smooth competition, Romeu gave up around €500,000 (£433k, $556k) of the fee due to him.

As The Athletic reported earlier this month, the release clause in his Girona contract was set at around €4million. But one of Romeu’s main aims was to avoid the transfer being completed via the payment of that clause, as it requires a level of bureaucracy he was not willing to go through.

In Spain, when a club plan to trigger a transfer target’s release clause, the player himself is required to attend La Liga headquarters in Madrid, taking the specified funds with them.

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That scenario would have made Romeu take part in a scene in which he would have looked like he was forcing his way out of the club. The former Chelsea and Southampton midfielder, who remains extremely grateful to Girona for the opportunity they gave him when he signed last season, did not want to end his stint at the club on a bad note.

Instead, Barcelona and Girona started to negotiate a fee for a standard transfer — thereby not triggering the clause — to avoid that situation.

Barcelona eventually found out the release clause was actually valued at €3.5million, although paying it to La Liga would have included taxes that made it rise just above €4m.

Girona asked for €4million to complete the deal but Barcelona were unwilling to pay more than €3.5m, which saw Girona revert to the release-clause plan. But Romeu was so desperate to avoid having to go through with that scenario an alternative solution was found.

According to sources close to the deal, Barcelona decided to take the €500,000 difference in valuation out of the money Romeu was due to be paid over the next three seasons in terms of salary and bonuses.

During Friday’s unveiling event, Barca sporting director Mateu Alemany explained the move from the club’s position.

“FC Barcelona and no one else paid the full amount of Oriol Romeu’s clause with Girona,” he said, although he didn’t deny that part of the money had been taken from the player’s expected fee. “The process has been absolutely cordial. At the start, the release clause was not clear because it was depending on some add-ons, but finally we managed to get La Liga to confirm the value.”

A happy ending of sorts for Romeu, then — he did not have to show up in Madrid with a suitcase full of money. Yet on Thursday night there was still some suggestion of discord between Barcelona and Girona over the deal.

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Speaking at a commercial event at a Los Angeles restaurant, Barcelona’s institutional vice-president Elena Fort said the club were not impressed by a tweet in which the mayor of Girona, Lluc Salellas, appeared to have a subtle dig at Barcelona over the Romeu saga.

A Girona trobarem a faltar l'Oriol Romeu. Bona sort per un gran jugador i persona. I al Barça, en fi, que faci, que s'anirà fent petit.

— Lluc Salellas i Vilar (@llsalellasvilar) July 19, 2023

“In Girona we will miss Oriol Romeu,” Salellas wrote. “Good luck to a great player and character. To Barcelona, well, keep going that way and you’ll keep getting smaller.”

Fort took the opportunity to reply publicly to Salellas, saying: “We have been negatively surprised by this public statement. We don’t understand it coming from a public institution and representative. FC Barcelona have all the respect for Girona’s citizens, but Oriol (Romeu) is just a player who wanted to be back at his club. The relationship we’ve had with Girona FC has been excellent.”

This is, as is often the case, a game of optics.

“It is also worth highlighting that we loaned Girona a player, Pablo Torre, with favourable conditions,” Fort added, although sources close to Torre’s camp suggest his loan was not at all linked to Romeu’s move in the other direction. Midfielder Torre, 20, had long been exploring possible loan options for the coming season and Girona, with their playing style and solid background in developing young talents, were able to convince him they were the best choice.

The reality now is that both players are exactly where they wanted to be — and Romeu, the man who had to leave Barca for Chelsea because he was not able to dislodge Busquets from the first team, is now ready to be his heir.

“Arriving here after Busquets is a beautiful challenge, but fulfilling everything he was doing on the pitch is a big deal,” Romeu stated.

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“Returning now to Barcelona is, I think, the most exciting moment of my career.”

(Top photo: Pau Barrena/AFP via Getty Images)

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