With only a month remaining in the summer transfer window, no new incoming signings are expected to land in Barcelona. However, the club still has work to do on facilitating the exit of expendable assets.
Barcelona dominated Spanish soccer during Hansi Flick’s debut season in 2024–25. The team looked back to being one of the best in the world and the expectation is to challenge for every piece of silverware available in 2025–26.
However, in between the success of last season and the big hopes for next, Barcelona’s longstanding financial issues have once again taken center stage this summer. The club struggled to complete three transfers and Marcus Rashford and Joan García still aren’t registered to play in La Liga, with less than three weeks before the start of the season.
In order for Barcelona to be bale to register their new signings, they need a financial boost. The obvious way to make money before the start of the season is letting go of players to cash in and continue the slow return to economic sustainability.
Here’s four players Barcelona need to find buyers for this summer.
Inaki Pena
Iñaki Peña’s days with his boyhood club are numbered. Despite Marc-André ter Stegen undergoing back surgery, Barcelona are happy to deal with their captain’s absence with new signing Joan García and Wojciech Szczęsny—the goalkeeper that took the starting role off Peña last season.
The La Masia graduate was good but not great during his extended run as Barcelona’s starter a season ago. Flick lost confidence in him when he was late for a training session early in 2025, opening the door for Szczęsny to make his Barça debut and take over the starting job.
With García joining the club as Barcelona’s starter of the future, Peña is now Flick’s third option heading into the season—the fourth once Ter Stegen is healthy. Simply put, Peña is expendable and after 16 La Liga starts last season, his stock has never been higher and Barça must capitalize.
It’s almost a guarantee Peña will leave Barcelona this summer, but the club might opt to wait considering he’s currently the only registered goalkeeper available to play in the club’s first La Liga game of the season.
Ronald Araujo
Ronald Araújo is arguably Barcelona’s strongest chip to cash in on this summer, at least from the players Flick is seemingly fine with leaving.
Last season was unquestionably a nightmare for Araújo. He missed the opening six months due to injury and once he returned, he was never able to displace Pau Cubarsí or Iñigo Martínez regularly in Flick’s lineup. But perhaps the most worrying thing was his form on the pitch. The Uruguay international was extremely shaky and mistake prone, seemingly always picking the worst possible time to have a blunder.
There’s an overbooking of center backs in Barcelona’s squad and the idea all summer has been to let go of one defender. Andreas Christensen has been the most talked about possible outgoing, but Araújo’s name has been thrown around more and more frequently off late.
Teams from Serie A, the Premier League and even Real Madrid have been linked with Araújo. At only 26, Araújo still has plenty left to offer and Barcelona could benefit from a substantial transfer fee.
Gerard Martin
Gerard Martín served as Alejandro Balde’s backup a season ago, but the La Masia graduate doesn’t necessarily fit the profile of what Flick wants from a left back.
Martín isn’t as big of a threat in attack and doesn’t offer the depth and incessant overlapping down the left flank like Balde does, or like Alphonso Davies did under Flick during his breakout season with Bayern Munich in 2020.
Martín is more of a stationary fullback that’s timid going forward—excluding the second leg of the Champions League semifinals vs. Inter Milan where he had two assists. During preseason, one of the young promising talents that Flick has praised is 18-year-old left-back Jofre Torrents.
Torrents fits the mold of what Flick wants from the position better than Martín, making it possible he’s given the chance to be Balde’s backup in 2025–26. It can’t be denied that Torrent’s ascension is a massive threat to Martín’s role under the German manager.
Oriol Romeu
There was plenty of hype surrounding Oriol Romeu when the midfielder graduated from La Masia almost 15 years ago. Fast forward to the present and Romeu has failed to blossom into what was expected of him and Barcelona are looking to part ways with him for a second time in his career.
Romeu spent the 2024–25 season on loan at Girona. After featuring in 37 games for Barcelona during Xavi Hernández’s last season as manager, Flick arrived and immediately decided Romeu wasn’t part of his plans. A summer later, the situation hasn’t changed and Flick didn’t even take him to the team’s preseason tour.
The 33-year-old stayed back in Barcelona as the club look to finalize his permanent departure. Barcelona are reportedly analyzing the possibility of letting Romeu go on a free transfer, simply to be able to offload his salary from the books.
The former Chelsea and Southampton man has been an exemplary professional, but it’s clear his time with Barcelona has come to an end.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Four Players Barcelona Need to Sell This Summer.