BarcelonaAdrià Pedrosa’s future remains more open than ever. The full-back has been on the table for weeks with a renewal offer from Espanyol, who want to extend a contract that expires on June 30. But the defender of the squad, who on January 1 will be able to negotiate with any other club to join him as a free agent from the summer, has not yet made any decision. Pedrosa has doubts with Espanyol, and if there is no change in position in the coming weeks, he will wait to see what offers come to him from January to finally decide whether or not to continue as an Espanyol player.
Sources from the white-and-blue club assure ARA that Espanyol “has sent him different proposals, the maximum that can be offered has been reached, but so far no agreement has been reached”. Nothing is known about the last one yet. It is precisely the lack of movement that has forced the Spanish organization to moderate its speech. If on August 22, when there was a week left for the closing of the market, the sporting director Domingo Catoira assured that they were still “optimistic” to be able to link their future, the lack of an answer makes the entity think of a new case Pau López. The mood of the club, with a month to go before the start of the winter market, is rather pessimistic.
If the youth goalkeeper left for free disenchanted with the club’s management, a similar scenario could be repeated with Pedrosa. Sources close to the player admit to the ARA that “a decision has not yet been made” and that the defender could end up renewing, an option that has not been ruled out for now. Of course, they warn that the management that Espanyol has done with the player has not been the right one. Part of Pedrosa’s discomfort comes from public statements by Espanyol’s previous general manager, José María Durán, in which it was hinted that the player was being labeled as transferable, words that did not please the full-back, that he had always been committed to the club where he was formed.
Offers from abroad and interest from Barça
Pedrosa signed his first contract as a first-team player for Espanyol in May 2019. The club shielded him with a €30 million buyout clause. The summer after promotion, in 2021, Pedrosa’s representatives presented an offer of around 7 million euros from a foreign club that quadrupled the player’s salary. Espanyol ended up declining it and told the defender that he would adjust his file to the new role he had in the squad. The first formal offer, however, took longer than the player wanted.
That same summer, Barça got in touch with Pedrosa’s entourage to take an interest in the footballer’s situation, as he fit the profile they were looking for (young winger, with projection, offensive and economic vocation). Despite everything, the Blaugrana club did not manage to negotiate his transfer with Espanyol, because Pedrosa was not one of the first choices of the technical secretariat of the eternal Spanish rival.
A year later, in the summer of 2022, several clubs also inquired about the Barcelona player, but none of the talks turned into a formal offer because the full-back was injured at the time. Pedrosa will, in fact, complete eight months of inactivity this December due to a pubalgia that forced him to stop in April, when he played his last match. The player followed a conservative treatment that did not work and forced him to undergo surgery in August. When they opened it, the doctors found that it was worse than they thought.
Now, three months later, the player is still in the final stretch of a long recovery that will continue for a few more weeks. When he returns, he will also have to earn his place in a position that Brian Oliván has made his own. Espanyol does not yet want to set deadlines and will follow a gradual reinstatement process to regain the competitive rhythm. While the player is focused on his recovery, his environment continues to receive the interest of clubs interested in him. However, due to his physical situation, it seems unlikely that he will leave the club in this winter market. This implies that Espanyol will hardly be able to enter anything this January, and, if they do not renew him in time, he will end up leaving on a free transfer in the summer.
If this scenario occurs, the white-and-blue club will only have ended up paying 8 million (it could be 12 if the variables agreed with Rayo Vallecano are met) for RDT and Pedrosa, two of the players with the best poster in the squad. From the noble offices of Cornellà-El Prat they wanted to cash in with them and deposit between 40 and 50 million euros, which would have served to strengthen the entire staff. But neither transaction ended as expected: the forward left through the back door, outside the market deadline, for a much lower amount than desired. The full-back, conditioned by his injury, remained at the club, but without renewing. The lack of income from player sales, together with the impossibility of Chen Yansheng executing new capital increases, force Espanyol to activate real estate levers to find new sources of income for the future.
