The striker, who had a contract until 2025, parted ways with Barcelona after playing only eight games with the subsidiary
Barcelona is making bobbin lace to register its footballers, suffocated as it is by the limits of LaLiga’s financial ‘fair play’. Meanwhile, he tries to drop ballast as he continues to pay the financial excesses of the stage at the head of his government of Josep Maria Bartomeu. The case of Brazilian striker Gustavo Maia -whose contract has been terminated by the club so that he can continue his career at Vila Nova in Brazil’s second division- serves as a metaphor for that time when 1,000 million euros in income was promised and the safe seemed endless.
Gustavo Maia, for whom Barcelona paid Sao Paulo 4.5 million euros in August 2020 when he was 19 years old, leaves the club after three seasons without having made his debut with the first team and after playing just eight games with the subsidiary (283 minutes). He did not score any goals.
It was that summer of 2020 the same one in which Bartomeu’s board carried out that barter with Juventus, later investigated by the Italian Prosecutor’s Office, for which he exchanged Arthur Melo for Miralem Pjanic. It was the same season in which about 31 million euros were paid for Trincao, already at Sporting de Portugal, and another 21 million for Sergiño Dest, still in the ranks of Barcelona despite not counting for Xavi, but with little market after his disappointing loan to Milan.
From Henrique and Keirrison to Matheus
Although the case of Gustavo Maia shows certain parallels with those of other Brazilians such as Henrique (eight million euros transfer) and Keirrison (14 million), who also did not make their debut with the first team. Or also by the midfielder matheus fernandes, signed the same summer as Maia. They didn’t even get to present Matheus at the Camp Nou despite the fact that he cost 7.7 million euros. Barcelona ended up parting ways with him in a bad way, and the club was sentenced to pay 8.5 million for unfair dismissal.
Maia, whose limitations were already discovered by the coaches of the lower categories a few days after arriving in Barcelona, had to respond to the profile of a small and mousey striker with a high capacity for overflow and finishing. Bartomeu, at that time, was convinced that the opportunity would come return the play to Real Madrid, who ended up snatching Vinicius and Rodrygo from the Barça club despite the fact that Barça had agreements with both.
However, Gustavo Maia was something else. Given his zero adaptation to Barça Atlètic, the club decided to give him up. First to the Porto Alegre International, until December 2022. Later, already on the last day of the winter market of this 2023 to the Valencia subsidiary, trained by Miguel Ángel Angulo and from the Second RFEF. He only started six of the 17 games that Valencia Mestalla played until the end of the season. There was no way for the Valencian entity to exercise the purchase option included in the assignment contract.
At the prospect of Maia I was not going to have any participation in Rafa Márquez’s Barça Atlètic, Barcelona has preferred to get rid of him definitively. It will remain in the memory that Bartomeu’s board of directors had no problem disbursing one million euros to ensure priority in hiring Maia, to which they later added 3.5 million for 70% of the footballer’s rights.
The legacy of that time of monetary madness still weighs heavily on a Barcelona that is trying to rebuild itself in the midst of a war economy and with too many sports and moral scars.