Barcelona unable to renew key defender’s contract despite agreement | OneFootball

The last month has been quite eventful for the FC Barcelona sporting department, as it has worked on and successfully completed several contract renewal operations, thus ensuring some of the most important pieces of this squad remain bound with it for the foreseeable future.

Since the start of the new year, the Blaugranes have officially announced the renewals of important players like Ronald Araujo, Pedri, Gavi, and Pau Cubarsi, while the youngster Gerard Martin has also extended his contract.

Meanwhile, there are still some renewals that Barcelona want to complete in the near future, and according to some reports, one player whose contract the Catalans are looking to renew is the defender Iñigo Martínez.

In fact, this was expected to be one of the simpler renewal operations for the Blaugranes, as the two parties are already on the same table regarding his extension.

Even if no formal agreement were in place, a clause in his contract would automatically trigger a one-year extension if he played at least 45 minutes in at least 60% of Barcelona’s matches this season—a threshold he is well on course to meet.

With Barça potentially playing up to 61 games this season, including possible runs to the Champions League and Copa del Rey finals, Martínez would need to feature in 37 matches to activate the extension.

So far, he has made 29 appearances, with 28 of them counting toward the clause, as he fell short of the required minutes in one outing. At this rate, his renewal seems like a mere formality.

However, Barcelona wanted to renew him even before he reached this mark and had already initiated talks with him, primarily due to his outstanding performances this season. An agreement had already been reached between both parties.

Still, there is one big hurdle that can keep this renewal from taking place for now, as MARCA reports that Barcelona do not have the FFP margin to register Martínez’s new contract.

The Blaugranes are talking to La Liga to find a way to get over this problem, and contacts between the involved stakeholders are going on with a high degree of frequency. However, the problem is yet to be solved, and thus, the defender will have to wait for some while before his contract is renewed for another year.