De Jong And Ter Stegen Set To Leave FC Barcelona As Free Agents After Contracts Annuled

FC Barcelona stars Frenkie de Jong and Marc-Andre ter Stegen are set to leave the club as free agents after their contracts are annuled due to alleged criminal activity.

Bombshell news reported on Monday saw it revealed how the club’s current board led by Joan Laporta have discovered that contracts signed by four players – De Jong, Ter Stegen, Clement Lenglet and Gerard Pique – during the rule of Laporta’s predecessor Josep Bartomeu have been found to show evidence of alleged ‘criminality’.

The club wants the arrangements agreed upon to be annuled, and the players to resort back to their old deals with the threat of potential legal action for all concerned if they don’t tow the line.

As Bartomeu scrambled to find ways of coping with Barca’s pandemic losses as the club sunk into debts of around $1.5bn, he had Pique renew until 2024, Ter Stegen until 2025 and Lenglet and Frenkie de Jong until 2026 on October 20, 2020 before then resigning in a cloud of controversy a week later.

While Pique has already agreed to drastically reduce his salary, Lenglet is currently on loan at Tottenham Hotspur and there hasn’t been much news about how his case will be dealt with.

As for Ter Stegen and De Jong, though, resorting back to their original arrangements would remarkably see them become free agents in June 2023 and 2024 respectively.

This means that if the German goalkeeper doesn’t get tied down soon, he will have permission to negotiate with other clubs from January onwards to join them for nothing next summer, in what would be a catastrophic loss for the Blaugrana on a figure regarded as one of the best players in his position in world football and therefore able to command a high transfer fee in normal circumstances.

There is of course more time to play with when it comes to De Jong. But given the circus that he has had to endure this summer with his name linked to moves to Manchester United and Chelsea, he would be within his rights to go back to his old contract, wait the 2022/2023 season out to see how things develop, and then go into the last 12 months of his contract next term before testing the waters of free agency in the first six months 2024.

As the 25-year-old joined Barca from Ajax in a €75mn ($76.6mn) deal in 2019, and the Catalans were said to have agreed an €85mn ($86.8mn) a transfer for him with Manchester United last month, seeing De Jong walk free of charge is also unthinkable.

Should things turn out this way, it would be yet another example of Bartomeu causing the club further damage despite having exited Camp Nou some time ago.

Simultaneously, however, both men have shown that they love life in Catalonia, and therefore might be willing to cave in and reach a compromise when all is said and done.