The FC Barcelona board has several operations pending official announcement contemplated in the financial report for the 2023/24 financial year presented by Joan Laporta. One of them has to do with what, in principle, will be the first reinforcement of the next market, although it is a player who will arrive to join the reserve team. We are talking about Ibrahim Diarra, a winger who will surely have opportunities with Hansi Flick if he can adapt quickly to the club's dynamics.
The footballer still appears in the Academie Africa Foot squad, despite the fact that the Malian team announced in December 2023 the transfer of the right winger to Barça. Although the Barça board did not make the operation official, Ibrahim tried out at the beginning of the year with Juvenil A, leaving very good feelings. In principle, the club hoped to close its signing in the summer so that the player would join the Barça Atlètic squad as a non-EU player.
However, the transfer window closed without any news about the Malian. Due to FIFA regulations, Barça cannot process Diarra's professional license until the footballer turns 18 next December. In this way, the best footballer from the last U-17 World Cup (he scored 5 goals and 4 assists in the tournament held in Indonesia) will only be able to join the Barça institution from January 2025.
The price that Barça will end up paying for Ibrahim Diarra
According to the information leaked by 'SPORT', Barça will end up paying around 1.7 million euros for the youth player to Africa Foot. The amount appears in the financial report 23/24, including an advance of 190,000 euros that was also paid to the Malian club when the signing of the winger was closed. The signing would be valued at a net of €1.5M, the same amount that Barça paid at the time for Mika Faye, who this summer left for Rennes for €10.3M.