On Wednesday, Barcelona finally announced that Alejandro Balde has signed a new five-year deal at the club. The 19-year-old has established himself as a first team regular over the last 12 months, and he has also become one of the best young players in world football during that time.
As part of Balde’s new contract, Barcelona have inserted a €1b release clause. Exit clauses are mandatory in Spanish football, but the Catalans have little intention of allowing their players to leave this way, so they tend to set exponentially-high clauses.
Balde becomes the ninth Barcelona player to have a release clause of €1b, as per MD. The others are Ansu Fati, Ferran Torres, Raphinha, Jules Kounde, Pedri, Gavi, Ronald Araujo and Noah Darvich, who currently plays for Barca Atletic.
Barcelona also have many other plays with release clauses worth hundred of millions of euros, as Sport have reported. The likes of Marc-Andre Ter Stegen, Andreas Christensen and Robert Lewandowski have release clauses of €500m, while Frenkie De Jong, Oriol Romeu and Ilkay Gundogan’s all sit at €400m.
It is a smart tactic for Barcelona to implement such high release clauses, as it allows them to sell players on their own terms. They know the feeling of losing someone against their will, as was proven in the case of Ousmane Dembele during the summer.
With psg plus teams from Saudi and Qatar sniffing around is it any wonder this is now a thing.