Barcelona yesterday confirmed that Manchester City defender Eric Garcia would join them on July 1 when his contract with the English Premier League champions expires.
Garcia is to return to his boyhood club on a deal until the end of the 2025-2026 campaign after three years at City, and follows striker Sergio Aguero in making the switch from Manchester to the Camp Nou.
Barca said they had included a 400 million euros (US$489.3 million) buyout clause in the 20-year-old Garcia’s contract.
Photo: AP
The defender was limited to 12 matches in all competitions during the 2020-2021 season due to injuries and illness.
Argentine striker Aguero, who is to officially join Barca on a two-year deal on July 1, said he hoped to play alongside compatriot Lionel Messi, who is godfather to Aguero’s son.
Messi’s contract expires this month and there has been no news of an extension.
“I hope we can play together, but the thing with Leo is that he’ll make decisions with the club,” Aguero told reporters. “I’ve been with him since a kid with the national team, I know him very well, and think he’ll stay here.”
Messi asked to leave Barca last year and was linked with a move to City or Paris Saint Germain but opted to stay for another season.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later