Barcelona’s Ansu Fati only turned 18 on October 31st of this year, but he’s already a superstar.
And that’s why it’s so important for Barcelona to ensure he commits to a long-term contract.
The winger made his debut for Barcelona’s first team on August
25th of 2019 at the age of 16 years and 298 days, making him their second-youngest player
ever. Ernesto Valverde’s side were going through a mini injury crisis and the coach had called
the promising youngster up for first-team training, even though he had never even
played for the B team. He was so outstanding that Valverde gave Fati minutes in the 5-2 home win
over Real Betis. A week later, Fati scored his first Barcelona goal in a 2-2 draw with Osasun.
Aged 16 years and 304 days, he’d become the youngest ever scorer for Barcelona’s first team.
What’s been most striking about Fati’s rise is his consistency. Fabrice Olinga, for example,
became the youngest ever scorer in LaLiga history by netting for Málaga in 2012 at 16 years and
98 days, but he never scored for them again. Fati’s records haven’t been flukes. He scored
seven goals in his first season and then started 2020/21 with a brace in Barcelona’s opening game,
a 4-0 win over Villarreal. It’s not fair to compare Fati to Messi,
however it is interesting to note that he hit his first few milestones even quicker
than the Argentine. It took Messi 38 games to score his first 10 goals. It took Fati 34.
It’s clear that Fati is a major talent.
The same certainty does not yet exist over his contract situation.
On July 24th 2019, before he had even debuted with the first team, Fati signed a contract
that had an end date of June 2022 and a release clause of 100 million euros.
On December 4th 2019, after it had become clear just what a talent Fati was, he signed a new deal
with improved terms. The end date remained 2022, although Barcelona announced that this could be
extended by a further two years. The release clause, meanwhile, rose from 100 million euros
to 170 million euros, with a note that this would spike to 400 million euros as soon as Fati was
officially registered as a first-team squad member and given a shirt number between 1 and 25. Until
then, he’d been playing with the Number 31 on his back and was still registered as a youth player.
In the summer of 2020, a couple of interesting developments took place
with regards to Fati’s long-term future.
The first was that he swapped agents. Fati was born in Guinea-Bissau, but moved to Spain with
his family when he was six and initially joined Sevilla’s academy, before switching
to La Masia at the age of 10. As he climbed through the various youth categories there,
Fati was represented by Minguella Football Management, led by Josep Maria Minguella,
who had been a key figure in both Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi’s moves to Barcelona.
But, Fati moved away from the Minguella agency as he negotiated his July 2019 contract renewal.
Officially, his agent then was his father Bori Fati, while he was also represented by Messi’s
brother Rodrigo. Rodrigo was also in the picture for the December 2019 renewal, but the Fati family
spent the first months of 2020 looking for a new representative as the relationship between
the Messi family and the club’s hierarchy soured. This is where – inevitably - Jorge Mendes came in.
On August 19, 2020, it was announced that Fati had become the latest Gestifute client.
The second development in the summer of 2020 was that Fati
was officially promoted to the first-team squad.
He was given the shirt number 22 and this automatically raised his release clause from
170 million euros to 400 million euros, per the deal that had been negotiated by Rodrigo Messi.
However, there was confusion and conflict over the end date. Barcelona maintained that they had a
unilateral option to extend Fati’s contract for a further two years, taking the end date to 2024 if
they decided to trigger it. And why wouldn’t they? Jorge Mendes and Gestifute, however, disputed
that. The argument was that this unilateral two-year-extension clause was invalid since
Fati signed that contract as a minor and Article 18.2 of FIFA’s ‘Regulations on the Status and
Transfer of Players’ doesn’t allow for under-18s to sign contracts longer than three years.
Barcelona, though, told sources that Spanish law overrules this and that it allows players over
the age of 16 to sign a contract of any length. In any case, a brand-new contract is expected
to be negotiated in the near future, given that Fati is currently one of the lowest earners in the
first-team squad despite being a regular starter. And the terms here will be dictated by Mendes,
the most influential agent in the sport and one who certainly boasts more experience
than Messi’s brother. Already, since becoming Fati’s agent in August,
Mendes has alerted the Barcelona directors to potential offers for his client from other clubs.
He holds all the leverage and reports in the Spanish media claim he wants Fati to
be the third-highest paid player after Messi and Antoine Griezmann.
So, while Fati’s emergence on the pitch has been a valuable tonic to Barcelona
fans over the past two seasons, his future may yet cause a headache.