Despite his offer, Barcelona are refusing to take any chances on the Spanish star

Flick is confident in his defense

Aymeric Laporte, Pau Cobarci’s ideal partner at the heart of Spain’s World Cup-winning defense, has offered his services to Barcelona in the final stages of the tournament.

The Athletic Bilbao defender is highly regarded due to his quality and the strong level he showed in the World Cup with La Roja, which extends his career, but despite this, he is not included in the plans of the sports administration of Barcelona for the 2026-2027 season, reports the newspaper. Mundo Deportivo Catalan.

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Coach Hansi Flick does not feel an urgent need to strengthen the defense, because he has enough options if the players do not leave.

The German also has full confidence in Gerard Martin at left-back. Erik Garcia, Andreas Christensen and Ronald Araujo are also in the squad if he doesn’t leave, along with Jules Cunde and young defender Alvaro Cortes.

“Barca” is afraid of crises

Furthermore, reports reaching Barcelona indicate that Laporte does not have a penalty clause in his contract, meaning that signing him would require direct negotiations with Athletic Bilbao, with the player linked with the Basque club until 2028.

Barcelona do not want to get into more trouble after the Neko Williams case crises during the summer of 2024 and 2025, which is a further obstacle to any attempt to sign Laporte.

The Basque French defender was already on Barcelona’s agenda under coach Luis Enrique, but Athletic did not want to negotiate with the Catalan club, considering only the release clause in the player’s contract, which was 65 million euros. Manchester City eventually paid this price to sign him in January 2018.

Laporte also tried to approach Barcelona on more than one occasion during his time in England, but financial constraints faced by the Blaugrana prevented a deal from being completed before Laporte joined Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nasr in the 2023-24 season.

In September 2025, the defender returned to “Atlético”, resuming his career in San Mamés.

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