Ilkay Gündogan has already made a decision: he will play for Barça starting next season. The Manchester City midfielder, finally, has chosen not to continue in the Premier League, despite the fact that Pep Guardiola gave the necessary instructions to try to ensure his continuity, and he will join the Barça club as soon as his commitment to the citizen club ends , next June 30. Thus, this footballer, the great priority of Xavi Hernández to reinforce the Barcelona core, will land in the Barcelona entity with the letter of freedom under his arm and will sign a commitment for two seasons, with the option to extend it for one more season. The agreement, right now, is only pending the official announcement by the group chaired by Joan Laporta.

The signing of Gundogan has precipitated this same Wednesday. The Barça football director, Mateu Alemany, has traveled to Munich to close the last fringes of an operation in which the Barça entity had been working for a long time. The German, a player who has been key in City's schemes, who has won his first hat-trick this season under Guardiola, was Xavi's preferred option to give the Barça midfield an extra quality.

Above all, seeing how in this 2022-23 season the creative capacity of the team dropped a lot when Pedri was forced to be away from the pitch. The midfielder, as happened with Robert Lewandowski last summer, has been seduced by the details of the Barcelona project and has ended up opting to try himself out in the Spanish League instead of continuing with a Manchester City team he joined in 2017 and where many consider him little less than a legend.

Make the registration effective

Gündogan's great concern is that Barça can make his registration effective. Something that, despite the fact that the economic situation of the entity continues to be delicate, has practically already been guaranteed. In their memory, surely, are the situations lived out last summer by Lewandowski, Christensen, Kessié, Raphinha, Marcos Alonso or Jules Koundé. The latter, in fact, was practically the last one that could be successfully registered in the competition, with the League already started and with the endorsement presented by the president himself, Laporta, and the entity's treasurer, Joan Olivé.

Regarding his record, the German midfielder will receive around 10 million euros per season. The same amount that, in fact, the Polish forward has received in his first year, although in the case of the former Bayern striker this is variable and will increase three million more per year until his third season to drop again to 13 million. the second in case of staying a fourth.