BARCELONA have confirmed the £15million signing of former Middlesbrough flop Martin Braithwaite from Leganes.
The Catalan giants moved to sign the Dane after receiving special permission to buy a forward outside of the transfer window following the serious injury sustained by Ousmane Dembele.
Braithwaite has scored six goals in LaLiga this seasonCredit: Getty Images – Getty
LaLiga rules allow an emergency signing if the club can provide sufficient documentation to prove that their player will be missing for more than six months with injury.
Braithwaite, 28, quickly emerged as a shock target, with Barcelona stumping up his release clause and tying him down to a four-and-a-half year contract.
The move will come as a particular shock to Middlesbrough fans, who saw Barca’s new forward score just nine goals in 40 Championship games in an underwhelming spell on Teesside between 2017 and 2019.
The deal will see Boro pick up a tidy extra sum though, with a sell-on clause somewhere between ten and 25 per cent believed to have been agreed when Braithwaite was sold to Leganes for an initial £5m last summer.
This means that they should receive an extra sum of anywhere between £1.5m and £3.75m.
The odd LaLiga rule sees relegation-threatened Leganes lose their main forward… without any opportunity to buy a replacement.
Their director general Martin Ortega was fuming.
He said: “We find ourselves in a hugely damaging situation. We can’t understand the current rules that mean a club, suffering a long-term injury, can unilaterally carry out an operation and pass the problem onto another club.
“We would understand this rule applying if there were a mutual agreement between clubs, but the current rules go against equality between clubs. We’ll do whatever it takes in a situation that causes irreparable harm.
“We believe this rule is unfair, and Barcelona have benefited. The injured party is Leganés. Barça have acted correctly. They told us their intentions on Monday and the only way was to pay the clause. We won’t bear a grudge because they’ve made use of a possibility in the rules.
“The player has been a gentleman and a professional. Yesterday he trained completely normally, knowing he could get injured. We’d like to thank him, his sporting performance has been immense.”
Barcelona will have no such problems though, unless anyone wants to pay his staggering new £250MILLION release clause.
In just over a year, Braithwaite has gone from playing under Tony Pulis in the Championship to working for possession-hungry Quique Setien at one of the world’s biggest clubs.
He will have to wait for a taste of the Champions League, however, with the deadline for players to be registered for the knockout stages long having passed.
The desire to keep the likes of Lionel Messi and Antoine Griezmann fresh for Europe’s biggest prize may give Braithwaite ample opportunities in the league though, with Barca locked in a title fight with rivals Real Madrid.
Their new signing has had a nomadic career to date, enjoying arguably his most successful stint during his four-year stay in Ligue 1 with Toulouse, where he netted 40 goals in 149 games.
The 5ft 10in striker bagged five goals in 21 appearances for Leganes after initially joining on loan from Boro in January last season.
Braithwaite managed just nine goals 40 appearances in a forgettable spell at MiddlesbroughCredit: PA:Press Association
And since making his move permanent in the summer, he has scored eight goals in 27 games in all competitions as his team battle the LaLiga drop.
They are currently 19th in the table, two points from safety having won only four of their 24 games this season.
Barcelona, meanwhile, trail Real Madrid by a single point as they look to retain their LaLiga crown once again.
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
