FC Barcelona’s goalkeeping situation has moved forward after weeks of financial wrangling, with Joan García now formally registered to play for the Blaugranes. According to ESPN, LaLiga granted the club permission to use salary space tied to the injured Marc-André ter Stegen to complete the paperwork, clearing the way for García to feature against Mallorca this weekend.
Barcelona remain above LaLiga’s financial fair play limits, but the league’s rules allow clubs to register new signings in place of players ruled out long-term, generally defined as an absence of around four months. A LaLiga panel determined on Wednesday that Ter Stegen’s back injury met that threshold, resolving a dispute in which the German goalkeeper initially gave a shorter recovery timeline before signing the club’s injury report after being temporarily stripped of the captaincy.
Barça used the same measure last season to register Dani Olmo in place of the injured Andreas Christensen, making the approach familiar to the club. García, signed from Espanyol for €25 million, has now been registered under the same rules, according to ESPN.
Reports from Barca Universal confirmed that the registration was completed in the early hours of Saturday, with García’s name appearing on LaLiga’s official transfers page ahead of the Mallorca fixture. At that stage, the roster listing still showed Iñaki Peña wearing the number one shirt.
Sources told ESPN that Barça’s board was separately preparing a €7 million guarantee against future earnings to help register other incoming players, including Marcus Rashford, Roony Bardghji and Gerard Martín, who is due to sign a new contract. President Joan Laporta has repeatedly expressed confidence that the club will return within LaLiga’s spending rules this summer, while the board has agreed to provide a directors’ guarantee as it awaits league approval for deals including the sale of VIP seats at the revamped Spotify Camp Nou.
