Barcelona contract renewals are the next job on Deco’s desk. The summer window shut with six new faces through the door and the squad Hansi Flick wanted; what follows now is quieter, cheaper and, in the sporting director’s own logic, just as valuable. Four young players who have earned their place in this team are about to be paid like it.
According to Mundo Deportivo, the club’s sporting department is already working on improved deals for Marc Bernal, Gerard Martín, Xavi Espart and Brian Fariñas, having just closed the file on Hamza Abdelkarim. All four are young. All four have gone from squad filler to genuine Flick options inside twelve months. And all four are currently on contracts that no longer describe what they are.
Barcelona contract renewals: the Hamza template
The blueprint was set last week. Hamza Abdelkarim, 18, spent pre-season making a case as a centre-forward and was rewarded with an extra year to 2030, an improved salary and a raised release clause. He has a first-team number, 29, and a first-team debut against Rayo already behind him.
That is the shape of every deal being discussed: more years, more money, a bigger buyout figure. Not a headline signing, not a fee, no announcement video — just a young player made harder to take away.
Barcelona have been here before, and recently. The heavy lifting was done months ago: Lamine Yamal is tied down until 2031, Fermín López to 2031, Eric García to 2031, Pedri and Gavi and Jules Koundé to 2030, Pau Cubarsí and Frenkie de Jong to 2029, and captain Raphinha to 2028. That block of work is finished. What is left is the tier underneath it — the players who were reserves when those contracts were signed and are not reserves any more.
Marc Bernal: the promise the club made
Bernal’s case is the most straightforward, because Barcelona already told him it was coming. When the midfielder suffered the serious knee injury that wiped out most of his breakthrough season, the club responded by extending him rather than waiting — a longer deal, a release clause lifted to €500 million, and an understanding that the terms would be looked at again once he was fit and performing.
He is fit. He is performing. The 19-year-old wears No.22, came through the Champions League night against Feyenoord looking entirely comfortable, and spent twenty minutes of it sharing a pitch with Rodri, which is the sort of apprenticeship money cannot buy. His contract runs to 2029 and talks over improved terms are already open; Mundo Deportivo reports that Deco has been in contact with Bernal’s agent, Raúl Verdú.
There is a second reason for urgency. Bernal turned down interest from Premier League clubs this summer to stay at the club he grew up in, and that decision was noted internally by Deco and by Bojan Krkic on the sporting side. Loyalty that costs a player money tends to get repaid eventually. This is the repayment.
Gerard Martín: the man who changed position and stayed
Gerard Martín is the outlier in the group by age — 24, not a teenager — but arguably the clearest case on merit. Signed as a left-back, he has been retrained as a centre-back under Flick and has taken to it well enough that the coach now counts on him as a genuine first-choice option rather than emergency cover. In a defence that lost Ronald Araújo on loan to Liverpool over the summer, that versatility has gone from useful to structural.
His deal runs to 2028 with a €100m clause. The club want more years, a higher salary and a higher buyout, and per Mundo Deportivo the player is already aware of that intention. Nobody at Barcelona expects Martín to threaten to leave. That is rather the point: these are not negotiations conducted under pressure, which is exactly why they are worth doing now.
Xavi Espart: a first-team player on reserve wages
Espart is the season’s surprise. The 19-year-old signed a deal in 2025 that ran to 2028 but carried the salary and registration of a Barça Atlètic player. Since then Flick has handed him the No.12 shirt and shown he is willing to pick him at left-back ahead of Alejandro Balde and João Cancelo — two established internationals being leapfrogged by a teenager still on reserve-team terms.
The mismatch is obvious enough that Mundo Deportivo’s Fernando Polo framed it bluntly in a column on Saturday morning: if the coach is picking Espart ahead of Balde and Cancelo, the club has to reward it. There is no panic — Espart is a lifelong culé and shows no sign of wanting out — but there is an obligation.
His stock is rising elsewhere, too. Espart has just broken into the Golden Boy shortlist alongside Cubarsí, which is usually the moment agents start taking phone calls.
Brian Fariñas: the No.4 who has earned his reward
Fariñas was handed the No.4 for this campaign, a first-team number for a midfielder who has been pushing at the door for a year. Barcelona are in advanced talks over a five-year deal, and the logic runs the same way as it does for the other three: the number came first, the contract follows.
Why a renewal is a signing
Polo’s argument in that Saturday column is worth translating in full, because it explains why a club that has just spent heavily is suddenly interested in paperwork. Locking down the best academy players, he wrote, is the equivalent of making a top signing: their market value rises, the club’s asset base grows, and the players themselves bring an extra layer of commitment that bought players cannot replicate.
There is a financial dimension underneath it. Barcelona’s La Liga salary limit has risen from €432m to €582m, which gives the club room it did not have twelve months ago — and academy graduates on improved but still modest terms are the most efficient way to use it. A raised release clause costs nothing today and can be worth €100m in three years.
It also protects against the thing that has hurt Barcelona most over the last decade: losing home-grown talent cheaply because the contract situation was allowed to drift. Every name on this list is on a deal signed when they were a prospect. Every one of them is now something else.
What happens next
None of these are emergencies and none are likely to be announced this week. The club’s stated position, per Mundo Deportivo, is that the work has begun rather than concluded, with Bernal’s the most advanced of the four. Raphinha’s own situation — a contract to 2028 and a captain who has made clear he wants to extend his stay — sits slightly apart, in the category of deals already done that may be revisited if performance demands it.
For now, the focus is on the four. Flick’s attention this weekend is on the trip to Levante, where a side that has won all five of its matches so far this season will try to keep the run going. Bernal, Martín and Espart can all expect minutes. On current form, each of them will be worth a little more by Monday than they were on Friday — which is precisely why Deco wants the signatures first.
