Riqui Puig, to Los Angeles Galaxy

• FC Barcelona keeps the repurchase right and 50% of a future sale

Riqui Puig is now officially a Los Angeles Galaxy player. FC Barcelona and the Californian club announced the agreement for the transfer just in time for the MLS market to close. The midfielder will be a Galaxy franchise player for the remainder of this season and the next three and Barça has a repurchase option throughout this period and 50% of that future sale. The midfielder from Matadepera has already said goodbye to those who have been his teammates until this month of August and to his coach, Xavi Hernández, who in fact no longer took him on tour, curiously to the USA, which will be the destiny of him.

The agreement between Riqui and his new club was reached a few days ago, as reported by KouraGoal, but the announcement has been delayed because the Galaxy have occupied the three franchise player slots and had to release one for Riqui, by virtue of the agreement reached with the already ex azulgrana.  

Riqui Puig is a 𝔊 💙🤍💛

The #LAGalaxy sign Spanish midfielder @RiquiPuig from FC Barcelona.

📰 https://t.co/hsV2rdtxmD pic.twitter.com/mR8Hm3qmi2

— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) August 4, 2022

Riqui Puig arrived at Barcelona in 2014 to join the FC Barcelona cadet and train in the Barcelona club’s youth football structure. In Juveni,l he entered as a resident in La Masia to dedicate himself professionally to football. He managed to reach Barca B after being one of the best of the generation of ’99, which in 2018 was proclaimed champion of the UEFA Youth League. The following season he went to the reserve team and made his debut with the first team, in which he settled definitively in the 2019-20 season.

In the first team, substitute

Despite the fact that he was one of the most promising players and without a doubt the most mediatic of his promotion, with a number as emblematic as Xavi’s ‘six’, Riqui stagnated in the first team. Neither Valverde, with whom he made his debut, nor Setién nor Koeman gave him continuity and, when the arrival of Xavi seemed to open the doors of ownership after a very bad relationship with Koeman, the young footballer kept his role as a substitute, being the last one in the hierarchy of the center of the field when being surpassed by the irruptions of Gavi and Nico.

Xavi told him at the end of last season that he did not have him and, in the current preseason, he excluded him from the tour of the United States. Riqui has had offers in Spain and in Europe, but has ended up accepting a destination in which Chicharito Hernández or Douglas Costa and Kevin Cabral are waiting, the three footballers who complete the quota of three franchise players and without a salary cap for the Galaxy, in addition, the former Barca player Víctor Vázquez, a generation partner of Messi, Cesc and Piqué at La Masia, and, among others, the goalkeeper Jonathan Klinsmann, who holds dual German and American nationality and is the son of former German coach Jürgen Klinsmann.