Barcelona will keep paying 90 per cent of ter Stegen’s wages to get him to Ajax

Marc-Andre ter Stegen landed in Amsterdam this week to finish a season-long loan to Ajax, and the detail that finally unlocked it says everything about where Barcelona’s captain sits at his own club. Barcelona have agreed to keep paying roughly 90 per cent of his salary while he plays for somebody else.

The wages were the negotiation

This deal was agreed in principle weeks ago and then sat still, because nobody could work out who was paying for it. Ter Stegen’s Barcelona contract runs to June 2028 and carries deferred money from the seasons when he agreed to push payments back to help the club squeeze under La Liga’s spending limits. That is a large annual number for any Eredivisie club, and Ajax were never going to absorb it.

The compromise, reported by Goal, leaves Ajax covering no more than a tenth of his wages. It is a straight loan through to June 2027 with no option and no obligation to buy, negotiated directly between Ajax sporting director Jordi Cruyff, who spent years at Barcelona, and his opposite number Deco. Ter Stegen flew out on a private flight on 30 July with the medical and paperwork still to come. “It is not all done yet,” he said on his way out of the Barcelona camp, which is the sort of caution you learn after a summer of this.

A reunion with Michel

Ajax’s interest is not abstract. Michel Sanchez was confirmed as their head coach on 2 June, on a two-year deal to 2028, after Girona were relegated from La Liga under him. Ter Stegen had joined that Girona side on loan in January, specifically to play his way into Germany’s World Cup squad, and Michel was the coach who picked him.

That loan lasted two matches. A hamstring injury in the second one needed surgery and ended his season, and it cost him the World Cup he had spent a year chasing. Before that he had missed the start of 2025-26 with a back problem that ruled him out of Germany’s qualifying campaign. For a goalkeeper of 34, that is a long time to go without a run of football.

Barcelona have moved on, quietly

The pecking order at Barcelona settled while he was injured. Joan Garcia, signed from Espanyol, is Hansi Flick’s first choice in La Liga and Europe. Wojciech Szczesny, into the final year of his deal, is content with the backup role and has said he is not planning to leave. That leaves ter Stegen third at best, still wearing the armband, still on the payroll, and no closer to a game.

Barcelona’s motive here is not sentiment. Getting even a tenth of that salary off the wage bill helps their registration maths, and a keeper playing regularly in Amsterdam is worth more to them next summer than one sitting in a tracksuit at the Camp Nou.

The calendar was pushing too

Part of the urgency was European. Ajax are working through Conference League qualifying, with the third round on 6 August, and the Eredivisie starts on 7 August, Ajax opening away at PEC Zwolle on Sunday 9 August. Michel has had one pre-season to sort out a squad he inherited in June, and a goalkeeper arriving with almost no football behind him in 18 months is either the steadying signing he wanted or an expensive gamble Barcelona are largely funding.

Ter Stegen has been at Barcelona since 2014 and won the Champions League in his first season there. He is going to the Netherlands to find out whether his back and his hamstrings can still get him through a full campaign. Ajax get a keeper of that pedigree for pocket change. If it works, everybody involved looks clever. If it does not, only one club is paying for it.

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