Barcelona are pressing on with their pursuit of a new striker to spearhead the Catalan attack next season. Talks continue over a move for Argentina’s Julian Alvarez, but fresh names are landing on sporting director Deco’s desk.<\/p>\n
According to Spanish newspaper “AS”, Greek striker Vangelis Pavlidis, the star of Portugal’s Benfica, ranks among the options the Catalan hierarchy are weighing up as a fallback should the Alvarez deal collapse.<\/p>\n
Krupi’s injury has only sharpened that interest. Ely Junior Krupi faces between 3 and 4 months out with a metatarsal fracture, leaving Barcelona under urgent pressure to strengthen their attacking options.<\/p>\n
Pavlidis may not top the club’s list of priorities, yet his technical qualities and obvious eye for goal, allied to a relatively modest price compared with the other alternatives, make him an attractive proposition for the sporting management.<\/p>\n
Much of the deal hinges on Ferran Torres. He still enjoys the trust of coach Hansi Flick, and the club want to renew his contract, though a departure this window would hand Deco far greater room to manoeuvre in the market.<\/p>\n
The numbers back Pavlidis up. He scored 30 goals and provided 6 assists in 53 matches across all competitions last season, having joined Benfica for 18 million euros from Dutch club AZ Alkmaar in 2024.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old strengthened his case this week with four goals against Switzerland’s St. Gallen in the Europa League qualifiers, thrusting his name back into the European spotlight.<\/p>\n
Camp Nou fans know him all too well. Pavlidis struck a historic hat-trick in just 29 minutes against Barcelona in a Champions League group-stage match last season in Lisbon, becoming the fastest player to manage the feat against the Catalans in European competition, even if the Blaugrana edged a thrilling contest 5-4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona are pressing on with their pursuit of a new striker to spearhead the Catalan attack next season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[92,4965,85,11561,265,25740],"class_list":["post-64485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-barcelona","tag-barcelona","tag-benfica","tag-laliga","tag-liga-portugal","tag-transfers","tag-v-pavlidis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}