Al-Ittihad have sent Unai Hernandez back to Spain, and to the second division to be precise, after he had been one of the brightest rising talents at Barcelona.<\/p>\n
In a statement on their official “X” account, Al-Ittihad confirmed they had agreed to loan the Spanish midfielder to Girona until the end of next season.<\/p>\n
Unai now returns to Spain, and to Catalonia too, a season and a half after leaving his former club Barcelona. He will be forced to play in the second division, where Girona now find themselves after relegation.<\/p>\n
Al-Ittihad signed the 21-year-old in January 2025 for 5 million euros, after he refused to renew his Barcelona contract having not yet broken into the first team.<\/p>\n
Hernandez managed just 10 appearances for Al-Ittihad, scoring one goal and setting up three more. A loan spell at Al-Shabab last season brought only a single assist in 21 matches.<\/p>\n
The young midfielder carried the tag of the next Xavi Hernandez, the Barcelona legend, yet he never won over Al-Ittihad’s German manager Jens Wissing. That left the club to loan him out once again, this time to Girona.<\/p>\n
His contract with Al-Ittihad runs until 2028, meaning he will be a single season from departing once his Girona loan ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Al-Ittihad have sent Unai Hernandez back to Spain, and to the second division to be precise, after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[184,27669,27667,92,1888,265,27668,27289],"class_list":["post-70602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-barcelona","tag-al-ittihad","tag-al-ittihad-vs-al-kholood","tag-al-kholood","tag-barcelona","tag-saudi-pro-league","tag-transfers","tag-u-hernandez","tag-x-hernandez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70602","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=70602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}