Fingers crossed
Valverde hopeful Iniesta will stay at Barca amid China speculation
MADRID: Barcelona coach Ernesto Valverde is hopeful Andres Iniesta will stay at Barcelona following reports his captain has offers on the table to move to China at the end of the season.
“I can’t comment on every story in every newspaper. This has not happened and we want Andres to stay, to keep scoring and creating goals for us,” Valverde said at a press conference on Friday.
Barcelona daily Sport claimed on Friday that Iniesta, 33, has an offer to join Tianjin Quanjian in the Chinese Super League worth as
much as 35mil (RM169mil) per season.
Scorer of the winning goal for Spain in the 2010 World Cup final, Iniesta signed a “lifetime contract” with Barcelona last October.
However, he will be 34 in May and Barcelona’s move to sign Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool
last month in a 160mil (RM773mil) deal indicated that they are planning for a future without him.
Javier Mascherano left Barcelona at the end of January to join Chinese side Hebei China Fortune.
Asked if he was worried about more of his players being tempted to accept mega-bucks offers from the Far East, Valverde said: “At the moment it has only happened with Mascherano and I am not going to make myself go crazy thinking about these things before they have happened.”
He added: “We have not got time to think about these just now given all that we are playing for.”
Barcelona face Chelsea in the Champions League next Tuesday but they come into the weekend fresh from a first free midweek in 2018.
“We have had a clear week and we needed that just to have a bit of a margin and get ready to go again,” said Valverde, whose side have drawn their last two league outings against Espanyol and Getafe.