After a long attempt to leave Manchester United in recent months, Marcus Rashford has finally found an ideal destination to continue his professional career. After being well involved with lesser teams during the transfer window, the striker has officially been announced by Barcelona as the new star for the LaLiga champions.
In this way, Rashford finally got the perfect team to move on and forget once and for all the difficult times he had with Manchester United. The 27-year-old striker ended his career with the Red Devils after Ruben Amorim publicly criticized his performance in matches and training. Since then, he has expressed an incessant desire to change clubs in order to play for a team with higher aims in Europe.
In addition, Barcelona will pay him around £325,000 per week in full; Rashford has accepted a significant reduction, dropping around 15% in earnings, bringing his salary closer to €14M gross per year. This one-season loan deal with an option to buy, valued at around €30 million, will allow the striker to finally show off his best skills.
Hansi Flick values the versatility of his players, and this is the central role that allows Barcelona to function so well tactically. In this way, Rashford can play both as a left winger and as a center forward, allowing other offensive references such as Raphinha, Lewandowski and Lamine Yamal. And as mentioned earlier, Barcelona needed a reinforcement in the attacking sector after frustrations.
Rashford is the reinforcement Barcelona needed for 2025/26
Barcelona wasted a lot of pre-season time thinking only about signing Nico Williams in a deal that always seemed to be on track, but the 10-year renewal with Athletic Bilbao made Hansi Flick desperate, ordering the board to speed up the arrival of a new striker.
Luis Díaz was another option that Barcelona worked hard on, but Barça cannot yet apply La Liga's 1:1 rule, according to which they can spend one euro for every euro raised. Financial restrictions mean that Barcelona only have to work with the reduced amount, and Rashford's arrival was essential to meet needs within the budget.