Sport newspaper<\/strong><\/a> published comments by City manager Enzo Maresca, who said: “At the moment, it seems Rodri will be in Manchester next Wednesday.”<\/p>\nThat remark simply reflects the player’s contractual situation. Until the transfer is settled, Rodri remains a City player and must stick to the pre-arranged schedule.<\/p>\n
Maresca’s stance makes sense. The Italian is defending his team’s interests and counting on the player for as long as he officially remains part of the squad.<\/p>\n
What happens in the coming hours is another matter, should Barcelona and City finalise the remaining details after negotiations edged forward over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Over recent days, Barcelona have pushed hard to take further steps towards the player’s arrival.<\/p>\n
The Catalan club want to speed the Rodri deal through as quickly as possible, so their new signing can slot into Hansi Flick’s system almost immediately. The German wants him at his disposal without delay.<\/p>\n
Flick’s aim is for Rodri to be at the Joan Gamper Sports City on 12 August, a date that forces all parties to conclude the deal quickly if they want the player training without further hold-up.<\/p>\n
None of this means the agreement is done. Sources close to the negotiations called for calm last Friday, precisely because a handful of matters still need resolving before the deal can be considered complete.<\/p>\n
Maresca’s comments, then, need not be read as a shift in the picture or an obstacle to the deal. They simply describe where things stand right now.<\/p>\n
Once the final green light comes, the time will arrive for the player to bid farewell to Manchester and head for Barcelona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A logical move by Manchester and Maresca towards Rodri: so what will Barcelona do? Barcelona are continuing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1139900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8813],"tags":[199,748,393,4884,7325,2465,886,101,35250,2357,16,15],"class_list":["post-1139899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manchester","tag-barcelona","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-laliga","tag-manchester","tag-manchester-city","tag-premier-league","tag-rodri","tag-transfers","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1139900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}