BarcelonaFerran Jutglà has landed on the right foot in Belgium. The young footballer who had to leave Barça because there was no place for him, despite proving to be a good piece for Xavi’s attack, could not have started his time in the Belgian league better. In just five league games, the one from Sant Julià de Vilatorta has scored three goals and provided two assists and played 394 minutes out of a possible 450. In the pre-season he already showed that he had arrived in Bruges to give joy to the fans, with six goals in the five friendlies he played.
Just starting the summer, he looked for a destination to get the minutes he deserved. Thus, he left transferred to Bruges in exchange for 5 million euros, in addition to the Barcelona club reserving 10% of the capital gain of a future sale of the player by the Belgian club. Thus, Barça received financial compensation for a player who did not have a place in the first team and who had arrived on a free transfer a year earlier, to play for the subsidiary.
Jutglà played 41 matches with the Blaugrana colors, in which he scored 21 goals. The vilatortí arrived at the Barcelona club in the summer of 2021, coming from Espanyol’s subsidiary. The player ended his contract with the white-and-blue team and did not renew. Of the 41 games he played, 32 were with Barça B (current Barça Atlètic) and nine with the first team, accumulating 464 official minutes, in addition to the Maradona Cup friendly in Saudi Arabia, in which also scored With the first team he scored two goals in official games and finished as the top scorer of the First RFEF with the subsidiary (19 goals).
Nine years at Espanyol
Before standing out at Barça, Jutglà spent nine years at Espanyol, but in two stages. The white-and-blue club kicked him out after his time as a cadet and he had to find a life for himself. Vic Riuprimer and Unificación Bellvitge were his teams until, in his third year of youth, Espanyol knocked on his door again, although he was immediately loaned to Sant Andreu. In fact, in the latter he had David Prats, Toni Lobo and Sergio García as coaches, now in Xavi’s coaching staff on the Barça bench.
After a short stint with Valencia’s youth team, Espanyol loaned him back to Sant Andreu in the 2018-19 season. A good campaign allowed him, that time, to stay in the parakeet subsidiary and become the captain in the second season, but without any opportunity in the first team. He traveled to the last League match of the 2019-20 season, the relegation match, with the first team, but did not make his debut. In fact, playing with the Perica subsidiary, he scored a goal against Barça B at Johan Cruyff and kissed the Espanyol captain’s armband. No one would have thought that a few months later he would change his shirt.
José Aurelio Gay, who was coach of Espanyol B between 2019 and 2021 and Jutglà’s coach at the Perico subsidiary, remarks to ARA that Jutglà was a very special discovery and that he was left behind of other strikers. Even from the sports area they asked him why he gave so many minutes to a player who did not stand out at all. “He had an extraordinary attitude, he could place him in various positions in the attack. He is an intelligent striker, he wins at the back, he has a good dribbling, and above all, he is getting more and more confident in himself”, he points out Gay.
Espanyol’s “mistake”.
Despite this, Jutglà has been a difficult player to handle, but at the same time with a huge capacity for improvement: “He has a different personality from others, I guess because of what he has lived through, because of his childhood. You had to know how to tell him things , never with negative aspects, because it frustrated him and affected him mentally. But he showed an incredible desire to improve. At the end of training we did a specific improvement work (TEM) and he always wanted to participate, until we got to the point where the coaching staff couldn’t give her more because other players also needed it,” says former Espanyol coach B. Ferran showed Barça what his former coach thought of him: “That Espanyol let him go and , moreover, free was a very serious mistake. He may not be a player for a club like Barça, but he is for one like Espanyol. Bruges and the Belgian league are the perfect springboard for Ferran to end up in a better team “, concludes Gay.
Despite having only been at Barça for one season, Jutglà said goodbye with all possible praise in a short but emotional statement: “It has been the best season of my short career. I have learned a lot here, but, above all, to give thanks every day for everything that was happening to me”.
