Barcelona striker January planning has quietly become the most important sub-plot of the Blaugrana’s summer. With the transfer window closing on Monday 31 August and Atletico Madrid still refusing point-blank to discuss Julian Alvarez, Barca have made a decision: if the Argentine does not arrive, no other No. 9 will. The money, and the financial fair play room, is being held back for the winter instead.
That is the report from MARCA, relayed by Barca Universal, and it lines up neatly with everything Joan Laporta, Deco and Hansi Flick have said in public over the past fortnight. Barcelona are not going shopping for a cut-price centre-forward in the final days of the window. They would rather wait, keep their salary limit intact, and strike properly in January if the goals dry up.
Barcelona striker January plan: preserve the room, wait for the right one
The logic is straightforward once you strip away the noise. Barcelona have not replaced Robert Lewandowski, who left on a free transfer for Chicago Fire, or Ferran Torres, who joined PSG in a deal worth €48.5m. Both the coaching staff and the sporting department flagged a new forward as a priority earlier in the summer. Only one name was ever seriously pursued.
Alvarez was the target. He remains the target. But Atletico’s refusal to open negotiations — reiterated in an increasingly bad-tempered public exchange this week — has blocked the operation entirely. Rather than panic-buy an alternative, the club’s executives have chosen to protect their financial fair play capacity so that a genuine top-level striker can be signed in the winter window if the need becomes obvious.
It is a bet, and not a small one. But it is a bet Barcelona feel they can afford to make right now, because of what has been happening on the pitch.
Why Flick can live without a No. 9 for now
Two games, two wins, seven goals scored, none conceded. That is the start Barcelona have made: 5-0 away at Elche, then 2-0 against Athletic Club in the Spotify Camp Nou’s La Liga opener. For a team supposedly missing a recognised centre-forward, the attacking numbers have been faintly ridiculous.
Raphinha, the captain, has been the man wearing the false-nine hat. He has three goals in two matches. Fermin Lopez, who has drifted into the same space from midfield, also has three. As Mundo Deportivo pointed out, the pair are currently La Liga’s joint top scorers alongside Kylian Mbappe — which is not the sentence anyone expected to write about a side without a striker.
Against Athletic it could have been a rout. Unai Simon produced a goalkeeping display that kept the score respectable, Raphinha and Lamine Yamal both struck the woodwork, and Barca created chance after chance from a shape with nobody nailed to the centre-forward slot. Mundo Deportivo’s match report described a team that, lacking the striker it wants, has simply manufactured one.
Flick, asked afterwards whether Raphinha is now his permanent No. 9, was deliberately non-committal. “I don’t know if Raphinha will be our number nine,” he told DAZN, in comments carried by Barca Blaugranes. “For me, it’s important that the plan works out, whether Raphinha is the number nine or not. Because of his dynamism, his runs off the ball, and his intensity, he’s the right one.”
He added: “We have an idea of how to attack and I think we played a great game today, with many opportunities. It’s very important not to concede.”
That last line matters. Flick’s side have kept two clean sheets from two, and a coach winning games 5-0 and 2-0 is not a coach demanding an emergency signing on deadline day.
The Alvarez situation is still the hinge
None of this means the Alvarez file has been closed. The Argentine has missed Atletico training three days running, and Laporta has publicly kept the door open while Atletico’s hierarchy have responded with statements insisting they will not sell to Barcelona under any circumstances. We covered the latest twists in that stand-off in our report on Julian Alvarez missing Atletico training for a third consecutive day.
The reporting is consistent on one point: it is Alvarez or nobody this summer. Barcelona are not lining up a fallback. If Atletico hold firm, Flick starts the season with the forward group he already has — Lamine Yamal, Raphinha, Anthony Gordon and Karim Adeyemi, with Fermin Lopez and Dani Olmo arriving from deeper — and the club revisits the market in the new year.
How Barcelona would fund a winter move
The January plan only works if the balance sheet cooperates, which is why the outgoing side of this window matters as much as the incoming one. Barcelona are hoping to bank a meaningful amount in the closing days.
- Marc Casado — the 22-year-old midfielder is not in Flick’s plans and his representative, Jorge Mendes, has been working to find him a destination. Mundo Deportivo report that RB Leipzig have joined the field of interested clubs. Barcelona are said to be seeking €25-30m.
- Hector Fort — the 20-year-old full-back has an agreement in place between Barcelona and Real Sociedad, though the player himself has yet to sign off on personal terms, with Borussia Dortmund also holding an attractive offer. A fee of around €15m is expected.
- Solidarity payments — smaller sums keep trickling in from former academy players. Nico Gonzalez’s €58m move from Manchester City to Newcastle triggers a FIFA training-compensation slice for Barcelona, who developed him from the age of 11.
Add those together and the picture is of a club deliberately building headroom rather than spending it. That is a notably different Barcelona from the one supporters became used to in previous windows.
What the summer actually delivered
It is worth remembering, amid the striker hand-wringing, that this has not been a quiet window. Rodri arrived from Manchester City in a deal worth around €60m and made his debut against Athletic to a standing ovation. Gordon came in from Newcastle for roughly €70m, Adeyemi from Borussia Dortmund for about €22m, Joao Cancelo returned on a free from Al Hilal, and Dominik Livakovic joined from Fenerbahce to bolster the goalkeeping department.
As one Mundo Deportivo column put it this week, Laporta essentially won the summer the day Rodri signed — the caveat being the familiar refrain of “a shame about the striker”. Six senior additions for a squad chasing another league title is a serious body of work, even with the No. 9 slot left conspicuously empty.
The risk Barcelona are accepting
Two matches is a small sample. Raphinha operating as a false nine has been a triumph so far, but it asks the captain to carry a heavy physical load across a La Liga campaign and a Champions League league phase. Fermin’s goals have come from a role he cannot occupy every week. Frenkie de Jong and Roony Bardghji are both long-term absentees, thinning the options behind the front line, and Gavi has been managing a knee problem.
If the goals dry up in October or an injury bites, Barcelona will be shopping in a January market that is famously unkind to buyers — thin on quality, heavy on premiums. Waiting is cheaper in the short term and can be far more expensive in the medium term. Barca’s executives have evidently decided that risk is preferable to committing significant money to a forward they do not truly want.
The alternative reading is more optimistic: this is a club that has learned to say no. For much of the past decade, Barcelona’s transfer policy was defined by urgency. Holding financial capacity in reserve, backing a system over a signing, and refusing to be bounced into a deadline-day deal is exactly the discipline supporters have spent years asking for.
Either way, the answer arrives in stages. First when the window shuts and we learn whether Atletico blink. Then over the autumn, as Flick’s false-nine experiment either holds up or runs out of road. And finally in January, when Barcelona will discover whether the money they saved buys the striker they actually wanted.
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