Barça have spent the summer trying to get Jorge Salinas out of Racing Santander without paying his release clause. On Tuesday, according to Barça Universal, relaying Matteo Moretto in MARCA, Atlético Madrid started trying exactly the same thing — and Atlético were the ones in direct contact with Racing.
It is a small file with an uncomfortable subtext. The two clubs have barely been able to look at each other since the Julián Álvarez standoff, and now the same 19-year-old is on both lists, with the market — per Mundo Deportivo — closing at 00:00 on Tuesday 1 September.
What you’ll find in this piece:
- What Moretto reported about Atlético’s talks with Racing, and what Atlético are said to be avoiding
- Why Racing’s €16m release clause has stopped Barça all summer
- Where Salinas would fit on the left of Hansi Flick’s defence
- The Jorge Mendes thread that ties Salinas to Alejandro Balde
- The obstacles — funding, timing and a relationship that has curdled
Jorge Salinas and Atletico: what was reported on Tuesday
The claim, sourced to Moretto’s reporting for MARCA and picked up by Barça Universal on Tuesday evening, is narrow but concrete. Atlético Madrid and Racing Santander were in direct contact over a possible transfer for Salinas, with both sides trying to find an agreement for the teenager.
The detail that matters is what Atlético are said to be avoiding. Barça Universal report that Atlético do not intend to trigger the player’s release clause and are instead negotiating with Racing over a different fee — a lower one, in other words, arrived at by agreement rather than by paying the number written into the contract.
That is precisely the route Barça have been walking all summer, and precisely where they have got stuck. Racing, per the same report, have repeatedly insisted that only the release clause takes Salinas out of Santander this summer; Barça Universal’s own reading is that Racing have no reason to make an exception for Atlético.
None of this is club-confirmed. It is a reported negotiation, on a Tuesday, in the last week of a window — treat it as a live file rather than a done deal.
Background: how a Racing teenager got onto Deco’s list
Salinas has been on the Barça radar since the start of the summer without the deal ever moving. Mundo Deportivo’s Roger Torelló put a valuation of around €16 million on him on 23 August and framed him as the club’s left-back option, part of a defensive plan that has always been conditional rather than funded.
The profile explains the interest. Barça Universal describe a Spanish defender who can play centre-back or left-back, and say he had an excellent Under-19 European Championship with Spain — in a squad that also contained Xavi Espart, the La Masia full-back Flick has compared to Philipp Lahm.
He also fits the recruitment logic Barça Universal set out in the same piece: a club strategy that increasingly depends on identifying emerging talents before their valuations explode. A 19-year-old defender at €16m is that kind of bet. It is also, at €16m, not a rounding error for a club still selling to buy.
Where Salinas would fit on Barca’s left
Gerard Martin is the only left-footed centre-back
The structural point is the one Torelló made on 23 August: Gerard Martín is currently the only natural left-footed option Flick has for the left of central defence. Everything else in that area of the pitch is a right-footer being asked to play across their body, or a full-back being asked to come inside.
Castello Lukeba is the centre-back Gerard Romero, via Barça Universal, reported Flick would want if the club reopen that file — and that signing has always been framed as conditional on cash arriving from a sale. The same applies to a left-back. Barça are not shopping with a budget so much as with a promise of one.
The Balde question sits underneath everything
Which brings the file back to Alejandro Balde. Barça’s left-back has spent the best part of a week at the centre of the window: left out of the squad for the first league game of the season at Elche, then, per El Larguero’s Santi Ovalle as relayed by Barça Universal, open to leaving after Flick’s public assessment of his condition.
Mundo Deportivo’s Gabriel Sans reported on Tuesday that the English press are putting a price on Balde and pointing him towards Manchester United — talkSPORT at around €40m, The Sun at around €25m — while stressing there is no agreement, that versions conflict on whether the player wants to go, and that Sans himself would not treat any of those figures as definitive. ESPN, via Barça Universal, and Sports Mole reported on Monday that United’s preference is a loan with an option, where Barça want a permanent sale.
Even if Balde leaves, though, the left-back position is not empty. João Cancelo signed permanently until 2029 this month and is described in SPORT’s account of Deco’s contingency plans as the guaranteed starter, with the club’s options ranging from a cheap young deputy to moving Gerard Martín back out to the flank or promoting the 17-year-old Jordi Pesquer. Espart, an academy right-back, started on the left at Elche. What a Salinas signing would address is depth and the left of central defence, not a hole in the XI — and it would still need funding, most plausibly from the sales SPORT valued at close to €100m across Casadó, Balde and Héctor Fort.
The Mendes thread
There is one more layer. Everything Barça reported on 23 August that Deco had met Jorge Mendes directly about Salinas, and that Mendes represents both Salinas and Balde — a double-operation that would, in theory, give both sides something to trade. The same report had Racing holding firm on the €16m clause and named Atlético and Manchester United as rival interest.
So Tuesday’s news is not a bolt from nowhere. Atlético’s interest was reported two days earlier; what changed is that they moved from interest to negotiation.
The obstacles: three of them, and none is small
The first is Racing’s position, which has not shifted since the start of the summer. If they genuinely will not sell below the clause, then Atlético will hit the same wall Barça hit, and Salinas stays at Racing for another season.
The second is timing. Barça’s plan for the left side has been explicitly sale-dependent for weeks, and with the market closing at 00:00 on Tuesday 1 September — the deadline Mundo Deportivo have put on it — there is not much runway left for a sale to complete and a signing to follow it. Nothing has been reported about Atlético’s funding for this deal either way, so that is a Barça-specific problem rather than a competitive advantage anyone has documented.
The third is the relationship. Barça and Atlético have not been able to conduct a civil transfer conversation since the Álvarez file curdled — Atlético’s chief executive Miguel Ángel Gil Marín told EFE last week that the club had turned down Barça’s €100m and would refuse €150m or €200m, and Atlético supporters turned on the player at the Metropolitano on Sunday. Neither club is inclined to do the other a favour. On Salinas they are not negotiating with each other — they are bidding against each other for the same third party, which is a different and slightly more brutal thing.
What happens next
Three outcomes look realistic, and no report ranks them. Racing hold the line and nobody signs him this summer. Atlético find a compromise fee below the clause, in which case Barça will have been beaten to a player they scouted first by the club they least want to lose to. Or a Balde exit lands in the next few days and Barça are suddenly able to pay a number they have spent all summer refusing. For what it is worth, the first has been the pattern of this entire window.
Flick, in the meantime, prepares for the first home league game of the season against Athletic Club on Thursday night at the Spotify Camp Nou with the defence he already has. Whatever happens with Salinas will not change that team sheet.
The bottom line
Salinas was always a sensible, unglamorous piece of business: young, able to cover the left and the centre of defence, priced at a level Barça could justify if a sale came in. The problem was never the player. It was that the club needed someone else to leave first, and the seller never blinked.
Now a direct rival is at the table doing the same maths. We will keep tracking the file through deadline day — our 23 August explainer on Deco’s Balde replacement plan sets out who else is on the list for the left.
