The Rodri Barcelona training question got its first real answer on Friday. Three days after signing, two days after the Joan Gamper Trophy and two days before the LaLiga opener at Elche, the Spain midfielder reported to the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper as a Barca player – and then peeled away from the group to work on his own.
Joao Cancelo did not. The Portuguese, whose permanent move was finally rubber-stamped on Thursday, trained fully with the squad. Both men were put through what Mundo Deportivo call the customary welcome on the way in – the gauntlet of playful slaps to the back of the neck from their new team-mates – and both are now, formally and physically, part of Hansi Flick’s group.
Barca had taken Thursday off after the Gamper. Friday’s session, reported by Mundo Deportivo’s Jordi Batalla, was the first with the two new arrivals in it – and the first chance to see how far away each of them is from a teamsheet.
What the Rodri Barcelona training plan actually looks like
Not a full session, is the short answer. Batalla reports that Rodri did specific work away from the group and will follow an individual programme to build up rhythm, because he has barely been able to train since his holidays ended. That is not a setback so much as arithmetic: a World Cup, a break, a minor procedure on his back over the summer and a transfer that only completed on 18 August do not leave much room for pre-season.
It is consistent with everything Flick has done with him so far. Rodri did not feature in the Gamper against Al Ahly on Wednesday, watching from the front row alongside Cancelo instead, and nobody at the club has promised anything about Sunday. The debut timeline we set out when he signed has not moved: this is a four-year contract, not a weekend rescue mission.
Cancelo straight in – and four men left outside
Cancelo’s situation is the opposite. He is 32, he knows the building better than most of the squad, and the only thing that had been missing was a signature. That arrived on Thursday, a permanent deal to 2029 for which he gave up part of his salary, and 24 hours later he was in the middle of a full group session.
The more revealing part of Batalla’s report is who was not there. Tommy Marques has left the training ground entirely – he is in Braga waiting to complete a move that, pending official confirmation, will bring Barca around 11 million euros for an academy graduate. Marc Casado, Hector Fort, Guille Fernandez and Toni Fernandez all worked apart from the main group, all four of them, in Mundo Deportivo’s phrasing, on the departure ramp for the closing stretch of the window.
That is five players either gone or being managed towards the exit with ten days of the window left, and it tells you where Deco’s attention is. Fort has already made his own preference clear: Mundo Deportivo report that Borussia Dortmund are his chosen destination, with Roma and Real Sociedad turned down.
Saturday, and then Elche
Whether either signing is available at the Estadio Manuel Martinez Valero on Sunday night is still, per Batalla, an open question. Barca train again on Saturday morning at 09:30, and Flick faces the media at 12:00 to preview the opener – which is where the Rodri answer will actually come from, rather than from any of the projections doing the rounds. Mundo Deportivo’s own read of the clues Flick left at the Gamper did not have him in the XI.
For Culers, there is something quietly satisfying about the picture anyway. A Ballon d’Or winner doing his own work away from the group at the Ciutat Esportiva is not a problem to be solved this weekend; it is a season-long asset being handled properly. Cancelo is ready now. Rodri will be ready soon. The line Flick still cannot fill is the one Deco is chasing somewhere else entirely, and it is not in midfield.
