Barcelona are confident that they will have new signing Joan Garcia available for their first game of the season against RCD Mallorca on Saturday night (19:30 CEST). However they are now working hard to have Manchester United loanee Marcus Rashford also available.
La Liga have approved Marc-Andre ter Stegen’s injury report as a long-term absence, allowing Barcelona to activate the injury rule and register Garcia using some of his salary limit space. With Robert Lewandowski out with injury for their first game, Rashford’s presence is the next most important for the Blaugrana and they will try to register him next.
According to MD, Barcelona could use the €7m guarantee that was approved by their board on Wednesday to register Rashford. Initially it had been reported that they would only turn to it if they got to the end of the transfer window and still had registration issues unresolved. However it now seems that Lewandowski’s confirmed absence has made the issue more urgent.
Meanwhile Barcelona continue to await the green light from auditors Crowe to include their €100m VIP seats lease. That would allow them to register Rashford, and likely the rest of their players awaiting registration. Roony Bardghji, Gerard Martin, Wojciech Szczesny and Marc Bernal are all awaiting registration too.
Hector Fort is expected to leave, and thus his spot in the squad near the bottom of the priority list, and Bernal is not expected to return for several weeks more, hence Martin, Szczesny and Bardghji are likely to follow. It is added that ter Stegen’s absence, if it is deemed more than five months, would allow Garcia to be registered for the rest of the seasons, whereas a four-month absence would only include him in Barcelona’s squad until January. There are conflicting reports on how long ter Stegen’s recovery period has been set at.