Liverpool Target Inks Suprising Contract Extension at Barcelona

FC Barcelona captured arguably the most sought after transfer target of the summer back on May 27th when the club signed 21-year-old Brazilian winger, Neymar, to a five-year contract. On Thursday, Barcelona announced via its website that the club has inked another winger, Cristian Tello, to a contract extension, which will keep the Spaniard at Camp Nou through June 2018. While the extension makes sense for the club, which upped Tello’s buyout clause from 10 million euros to 25 million euros, it was a rather surprising signing when looking at it from the perspective of Tello. Since joining the Barcelona first team in 2011, Tello has appeared in just 37 matches and has scored 10 goals. The majority of his appearances have come as a substitute and with the recent signing of Neymar, who plays the same left wing position as Tello; one must question the youngsters thought process. At 21-years-old, the most important thing right now is getting match time, but competing for such time against the likes of Neymar, Lionel Messi, Cesc Fabregas, Alexis Sanchez, and Andres Iniesta is not the way to get it. The signing of Neymar even caused long time Barcelona winger and Spanish international, David Villa, to leave for Atletico Madrid earlier in July with the idea that match time would soon become scarce. Now, there is something to be said for playing at one of the world’s biggest clubs and having the confidence to believe you can ultimately get better and compete, but as such a young player it may have been more beneficial to go elsewhere for more money and more playing time. Reports over the last month or so indicated interest in Tello from the likes of Liverpool, Schalke, and Borussia Dortmund, but the speedy winger seemed steadfast in his desire to stay at Camp Nou. With the extension, Barcelona has made a great move; signing a young, promising player, who wants to be at the club and can help the team off the bench. By increasing Tello’s buyout clause, the club has also guaranteed to cash out further if another team wants the winger badly enough. While it seems a win-win situation for Barcelona however, Tello himself may be in a different position. On the depth chart, Tello sits behind some of the best players in the world and may have trouble exceeding, let alone matching, the playing time he enjoyed over the past two seasons. With all that being said, the contract extension of Cristian Tello at Barcelona must be considered a rather puzzling surprise, at least from Tello’s point of view.