Barcelona fullback target can get out of their hands in January | OneFootball

Since his arrival at FC Barcelona, Hansi Flick has had a quite stable starting eleven which he does not alter often. However, naturally, he still feels the need to rotate his starters once every while to keep them fresh and competitive.

One of the areas where he might have felt the most uncomfortable to rotate his starters could be the flanks, mainly because of the lack of experience of Hector Fort and Gerard Martin, who are his replacements for Jules Kounde and Alejandro Balde.

Thus, strengthening the flanks is one of the priorities for Barcelona in the next summer transfer window, and for this purpose, one of the players they have been linked with is the Rayo Vallecano defender, Andrei Ratiu.

After a rather slow 2023-24 season, the Romanian fullback has become a key part of the Rayo defence this season and has played 15 consecutive games this season, playing the full 90 minutes in all but one of these games.

Barcelona are unlikely to bring in any new reinforcements in this January transfer window because of their financial fair play problems and would have liked to bring in Ratiu to their team next summer.

However, according to Mundo Deportivo, there is quite a high possibility that the 26-year-old defender can leave Rayo in the winter, as there are several big clubs looking to take advantage of his €25 million release clause.

These big clubs that are looking to sign the defender include the likes of Atletico Madrid, Tottenham Hotspurs, Bayer Leverkusen, and Roma, in addition to Barcelona. The Blaugranes’ Sporting Director, Deco, had already discussed the player with his agent, when the Portuguese official met him for the renewal of another of his clients, Pedri.

Tottenham and Leverkusen are monitoring him as a possible replacement for Pedro Porro and Jeremie Frimpong, in case either of them leaves their respective clubs. Roma have also entered the race to sign him with much force recently.

With the winter transfer window set to open in a matter of days, it will be interesting to see which of these sides Raiu joins, or whether he remains at Rayo to keep Barcelona’s chances alive till the summer.