According to the Jijantes FC website, FC Barcelona is close to recruiting young FC Porto winger Cardoso Varela (16 years old), at the heart of an imbroglio between his club and his agent. The Portuguese press denies an agreement with the Catalan club.
Barça is accelerating on a very young hope of European football. According to the Jijantes FC website, the Catalan club will be close to recruiting Cardoso Varela (16 years old), young winger from FC Porto. The player and his agent Andi Bara landed in the Catalan city on Monday to meet Deco, sporting director of the Blaugrana. Varela then visited the facilities including the Ciutat Esportiva de Sant Joan Despi training center. Deco then made him a proposal after presenting the club's project.
The good relations between the former Portuguese midfielder and agent Andi Bara, with whom he worked on the Dani Olmo and Mikayil Faye files, would have facilitated exchanges. Aged 16 since October 29, the young Portuguese winger can sign his first professional contract with the club of his choice from January 2025. If the transfer is presented very well by the Spanish media, the Portuguese press is much less categorical on this subject. According to O Jogo, the player will not go to FC Barcelona.
The daily reminds that the situation of the young winger is the subject of an imbroglio. His agent had wanted to register him with the obscure club NK Dinamo Odranski, resident of Croatian D4, while waiting for him to be old enough to sign elsewhere. In October, Fifa opposed this transfer, agreeing with Porto.
André Villas-Boas, president of the club, strongly denounced this “nebulous” maneuver. “On the verge of being able to sign his professional contract, he was the victim of certain agents who, taking advantage of his family's economic weakness, hijacked him, forcing him to flee the club, which guaranteed his integrity, in exchange for a sum of money and a leonine contract which jeopardizes his sporting future and his human development”, lamented the former OM coach. “Porto provided this young man with sports and academic training, social and psychological support, is always in direct contact with his family to guarantee his development as a whole. He was on the verge of signing for a club in a league which hides behind a legislative and regulatory 'hole' which violates fundamental rights to integrity.”
“We could have chosen the simplest solution, entering into an inhumane auction, in which the biggest beneficiaries would be the agents, who ignore the human aspect of sport, and the clubs who don't really care about their athletes “, he added. “On the contrary, we have invested our efforts in the recovery of the young man, we involve the national and international police and judicial authorities, we promote processes with regulatory bodies, such as those of FIFA. The law is on our side and we hope that this case will be one of the last in which young people are not protected from obscure interests.”
