Bar\u00e7a made an official bid<\/a> earlier on Monday and things moved very fast from there, with Cancelo\u2019s personal preference for a return to Catalonia proving key in the deal, as Al Hilal had reached initial agreement with Inter Milan but ended up accepting Bar\u00e7a\u2019s offer instead.<\/p>\nThe Blaugrana will use the salary cap space opened by Andreas Christensen\u2019s injury to sign Cancelo, and Hansi Flick has given his green light on the deal as well. According to other reports from Catalan media, Flick likes Cancelo\u2019s experience, versatility and ability to play on both sides as a full-back, and the coach also understood that signing a center-back was virtually impossible in the January transfer window.<\/p>\n
With only the official announcement now pending, Cancelo is set for a reunion with Bar\u00e7a after spending the 2023-24 season on loan, and he returns to add much-needed depth at the back and give the Catalans a proven, high-level talent as Bar\u00e7a look for a deep run in all competitions in the second half of this campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona have reached complete agreement with Saudi club Al Hilal to sign Portuguese full-back Jo\u00e3o Cancelo on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,59086,596,85],"class_list":["post-394926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barcelona-transfer-rumors-news","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}