The Jesse Bisiwu Ghana story is the kind that only starts once a teenager plays well. Two goals in two minutes against Basel, a summer in Flick’s first-team group, and suddenly an 18-year-old who has spent his entire youth career in Belgium shirts has a second federation on the phone.
Bisiwu arrived from Club Brugge this summer for 8.5 million euros, and he has been one of the genuine positives of Barca’s pre-season. He featured against Udinese, Basel and Al Ahly; against the Swiss side he scored twice inside two minutes. That was enough, according to Barca Universal, relaying SPORT, to move the Ghana Football Association from admiring interest to active pursuit.
What the Jesse Bisiwu Ghana approach involves
SPORT’s version is that the GFA has been in contact with Bisiwu’s representatives for months and is weighing a senior call-up in the near future. The reasoning is straightforward: get in before Barcelona settles the question for them. Bisiwu has 25 youth caps for Belgium across the Under-15, Under-16, Under-17, Under-18 and Under-19 sides, but family roots still leave the door to Ghana open, and the GFA want him available for the road to the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations.
Belgium, per the same reporting, know about it and are watching, but have made no formal move.
Mundo Deportivo say the decision is already made
This is where the two accounts diverge, and it is worth being precise about it. Mundo Deportivo’s Jordi Batalla reports that the GFA did indeed come knocking, but that Bisiwu’s father has turned the proposal down and opted for his son to keep representing Belgium. Batalla frames it in the conditional – reported, not confirmed – and notes that Bisiwu has come through every Belgian youth level and wants to keep climbing towards the senior team.
There is a nice Barca footnote to that. The current Belgium manager is Mark van Bommel, a former Blaugrana himself, and Batalla’s point is that he will be watching Bisiwu’s development at Barcelona closely.
So: one outlet has an open tug-of-war, the other has a family decision already taken. Both agree on the underlying fact, which is that a player who cost 8.5 million euros and was presented at the Gamper as a Barca Atletic squad member in the No 27 is now valuable enough that one federation is chasing him and another is watching closely enough to be worried about it.
Why it matters to Flick, not just to Ghana
The international subplot is only interesting because of the club one. Barca have signed three wingers this summer – Anthony Gordon, Karim Adeyemi and Bisiwu – and are still hunting a centre-forward, with El Chiringuito TV reporting that Lautaro Martinez is the name now at the top of Deco’s list. In a forward line that thin through the middle, minutes have been going to whoever takes them, and Bisiwu has taken his.
He does not have a first-team number. He is not, on paper, part of the senior squad. But he has played in three of Barca’s pre-season friendlies and scored in one of them. As the Gamper made fairly clear, Flick is willing to give academy and fringe forwards real responsibility while the No 9 file stays open.
Barca open their LaLiga title defence at Elche on Sunday at 21:30, and Bisiwu is unlikely to be central to that evening. But the summer has already changed what he is. Earlier this summer he was a Club Brugge teenager Barca were still haggling over; by the third week of August, Ghana are trying to cap him and Belgium are keeping a closer eye on him than they were. That is the fastest kind of progress there is, and it has happened in a Barca shirt.
