He walked out at the Estadio Manuel Martínez Valero last Sunday with a 36 on his back — an academy number on a player the first team had already stopped treating as a visitor. Two days later, the Xavi Espart number 12 story is doing the rounds in Catalonia: the 19-year-old is reported to have earned a first-team squad number of his own, and he has earned it the long way.
According to Mundo Deportivo, Barça have decided to promote Espart to the senior squad and register him as a first-team player. The shirt is the visible part of it: after wearing 36 in the first league game Barça have played this season, he is set to take the 12 in LaLiga. As of Tuesday evening the club had not confirmed the move publicly, so this remains a report rather than an announcement.
Xavi Espart number 12: what Mundo Deportivo report
MD’s Roger Torelló writes that the decision is the first step in a longer plan. Espart is under contract until 2028, and the club intend to improve his terms and extend that deal — but only once the window has closed, which Mundo Deportivo have put at 00:00 on Tuesday 1 September. For now, the promotion and the shirt are the reward.
It is not a token gesture. As Barça Universal noted in their write-up of the same report, La Masia is not short of teenagers queuing for exactly this. A senior registration is a finite thing, and Espart, BU add, gave up his holidays after the Under-19 European Championship to be available to Hansi Flick. That detail travels a long way with this coaching staff.
The versatility Flick keeps rewarding
Flick has been open about what he likes. He has previously likened Espart to Philipp Lahm — a comparison we looked at in detail on Thursday — and after the win at Elche he was warm again. “He can play on the right, on the left. He knows what he has to do and is fantastic on the ball; he does everything well,” the manager said, via Barça Blaugranes.
The Elche start tells you why that matters. Espart is naturally a right-back who can also operate as a holding midfielder or an interior, yet he lined up at left-back that night because Flick had left Alejandro Balde behind in Barcelona and João Cancelo, MD report, was not yet up to speed enough to start. A squad heading into a compressed season needs players who solve two or three problems rather than one. Espart, at 19, already does.
A La Masia pathway that is actually open
What makes this land with Culers is the pattern around it. The club had just tied Pedro Villar down to 2030 when the Espart story broke — two academy players rewarded inside 24 hours. The academy is not simply being harvested for sales this summer; it is being used, and the players who force the issue in pre-season are being kept.
Espart forced the issue. MD’s line is that he won over Flick and the sporting department, Deco included, with the work he put in across pre-season; Barça Universal add that the promotion is not simply a reward for one strong match. That is the harder, more durable route, and it is the one that tends to produce squad players who last.
He is still 19, still learning, and the No. 12 does not guarantee him a single minute. Barça return to the Spotify Camp Nou on Thursday evening against Athletic Club in the rearranged fixture, and Flick has plenty of options in defence. But the boy who wore 36 at Elche has been told, in the clearest currency the club deals in, that he belongs. The rest is up to him.
