Rodri Completes Barcelona Move After Manchester City Accept £65.4m Bid
Rodri landed in Catalonia on Monday to complete a move from Manchester City to Barcelona, telling reporters upon arrival: "It is a dream to play for Barcelona" (The Guardian). The 30-year-old midfielder will undergo a medical on Tuesday and is expected to sign a four-year contract (Mirror).
Manchester City accepted Barcelona's third bid — £65.4 million, equivalent to roughly $88.5 million — after rejecting two earlier offers of around €45m (£38.5m) and €60m (£51m) (The Guardian; Rediff). The deal brings to a close Rodri's seven-season stay at the Etihad Stadium, where he arrived from Atlético Madrid in July 2019 as Pep Guardiola's second signing of that summer (Manchester City).
It is a stint that delivered the highest honours in the club game. Rodri won the Premier League four times and scored the only goal when Manchester City beat Inter Milan in the 2023 Champions League final — the night that completed the club's first European crown. He went on to win the Ballon d'Or, the award for the world's best footballer, in the year that followed.
The past two seasons have tested him. An anterior cruciate ligament injury — a tear to the knee ligament that is among the most serious a footballer can suffer — ruled him out of most of the 2024-25 campaign, and he was limited to 33 appearances in Guardiola's final season in charge due to hamstring and groin problems (The Guardian). This summer he also had minor back surgery and missed most of City's pre-season programme (The Guardian, 6 August). With Rodri entering the final year of his contract, City chose to cash in rather than risk losing him for nothing next summer.
For Barcelona, Rodri represents a statement signing — a world-class midfielder, a Ballon d'Or winner, and a player who knows Spanish football inside out from his years at Atlético Madrid and Villarreal before that. He returns to La Liga (Spain's top division) at 30, with enough years left to shape a Barcelona rebuild.
For City, the departure leaves a sizable hole. Rodri is not the only midfielder heading out of the Etihad this summer: Bernardo Silva has also left, and Tijjani Reijnders has been sold to Al Qadsiah (The Guardian). The club has already spent £116m on Elliot Anderson to reinforce the position, and is closing in on a deal for Lille's Ayyoub Bouaddi.
Seven years ago, Rodri sat down for his first Manchester City press conference and described the move as "a great step" in his career (Manchester City, July 2019). He was 23 then, a prospect with something to prove. He leaves as one of the defining players of City's golden era, heading back to Spain for what could be the final major chapter of a decorated career.
