Marcus Rashford arrived in Catalonia on Sunday and is expected to be officially unveiled as a Barcelona player this week as a seven-month-long saga belatedly nears its conclusion.

After being exiled from Manchester United’s first-team squad by Ruben Amorim last December following a series of unimpressive training displays, Rashford opened himself up to a “new challenge”. As reported at the time, the England international’s dream destination lay on mainland Europe.

Ultimately, Rashford had to settle for Birmingham rather than Barcelona, although he did rediscover some of his old spark during a half-season loan spell under Unai Emery’s stewardship at Aston Villa. The Premier League outfit passed on the £40 million ($53.8 million) buy option in his contract, throwing the 27-year-old back into a state of limbo which has left him training at Carrington exclusively after Ruben Amorim has gone home for the day.

There’s no more need to tiptoe around the United’s training facilities. Following news that the Premier League outfit had managed to secure a mutually beneficial agreement with Barcelona for a one-year loan with the option to buy, Rashford jetted off to Spain.

As he touched down at the airport, Rashford got his first taste of the media frenzy which awaits him. Local journalists filmed the United academy graduate coming through customs before following him out to the parking lot.

Gary Lineker, the only other male England international to play in La Liga for the club, captured the media scrutiny in the city. “There’s two local newspapers that just covered sport,” he told Simon Kuper for his book on the history of Barcelona, Barça. “You’d get 30, 40 pages every day of stuff about—everything. I remember the news was so short one day, the frontpage headline was: ‘Venables has diarrhoea’. When they say it’s més que un club, it’s not just the fact that it’s an enormous football club. It’s also a football club that is occasionally bonkers.”

Rashford is expected to become an official member of this “bonkers” institution on Wednesday, according to Mundo Deportivo (one of the outlets that Lineker was referring to). Originally pencilled in for a Tuesday presentation, Hansi Flick’s double training session for that day has pushed the process back.

Nevertheless, Barcelona should have Rashford in their ranks in time for Thursday, when the club fly for Asia for a preseason tour of Japan and South Korea, ESPN claim.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Report: When Barcelona Hope to Finalize Marcus Rashford Transfer After Man Utd Star Lands in Spain.

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