Rodri is going to Barcelona for 76.5 million euros, with a year left on his City deal

Barcelona and Manchester City have agreed a deal for Rodri worth up to 76.5 million euros, ending a pursuit that ran most of the summer and taking the reigning World Cup-winning captain back to Spain seven years after he left it. The structure is 60 million up front with a further 16.5 million in performance add-ons, of which more than 11 million is considered realistic, so City can expect to bank somewhere north of 71 million by the end of the contract.

It was Barcelona’s third attempt. City turned down the first two, held out for a figure in the 60 to 65 million pound range, and only moved when the paperwork on the third offer landed over the weekend. Rodri is 30, and Barcelona are proposing a four-year deal. He could be presented to the crowd at the Joan Gamper Trophy against Al Ahly on Wednesday evening at the Spotify Camp Nou, which doubles as the squad’s official presentation for the season.

City were negotiating from a losing position

The reason this ended at 76.5 million rather than the 80 City wanted in July is on the contract. Rodri’s deal, signed in 2022, runs to 30 June 2027. A club with one year of control left over a 30-year-old who has told everyone he wants to go home does not get to set the price, and City clearly worked that out somewhere between rejecting the second bid and accepting the third.

What they are selling is not a squad player. City paid a 62.6 million pound release clause to take Rodri from Atletico Madrid in July 2019. He scored the only goal of the 2023 Champions League final against Inter, the one that finally got the club the trophy it had reorganised itself around, and won the 2024 Ballon d’Or in a season that ended with a fourth straight Premier League title and the player of the tournament award at Euro 2024.

Real Madrid wanted him too, and had been circling since the spring. Rodri made it clear his preference was Barcelona. Madrid have already taken one City midfielder this summer, signing Bernardo Silva on a free after nine years at the club, with Jose Mourinho’s arrival at the Bernabeu helping to swing that one.

He leaves on the back of a strange few weeks

Rodri’s summer was the best of his career and then it stopped. He captained Spain through the World Cup, took the Golden Ball as the tournament’s best player, and lifted the trophy after a 1-0 win over Argentina in extra time. Then he had minor back surgery on 28 July for a problem he had been carrying and had put off dealing with until Spain were done.

He was not in the squad on 16 August when City lost the Community Shield 3-0 to Arsenal in Cardiff. Enzo Maresca’s first competitive match as City manager was effectively gone inside a minute, Calafiori scoring after 24 seconds, with Havertz adding a second before the half hour and Odegaard finishing it three minutes into the second half. The move that takes him out of that midfield for good was being finalised over the same weekend.

What Barcelona are buying him for

Frenkie de Jong has been out since the World Cup with a medial collateral ligament tear in his right knee, picked up in North America and played through. Hansi Flick has covered with Marc Bernal and Marc Casado, which is a fine holding solution for six weeks and a thin one for a title defence. Rodri is a different order of signing, and he joins a summer that has already brought in Karim Adeyemi from Borussia Dortmund and Anthony Gordon.

City, meanwhile, start the Premier League at home to Bournemouth on 23 August with a midfield built around Mateo Kovacic, Elliot Anderson, Matheus Nunes and Nico Gonzalez, and without the player who held the middle of it together for seven seasons. Neither club had commented publicly on the transfer as of Monday.

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