{"id":809750,"date":"2026-08-11T06:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T06:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/809750\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T06:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T06:04:11","slug":"al-hilal-give-joao-cancelo-new-squad-number-despite-negotiations-with-barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/809750\/","title":{"rendered":"Al-Hilal give Jo\u00e3o Cancelo new squad number despite negotiations with Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Saudi club Al-Hilal have taken a step towards keeping Jo\u00e3o Cancelo by assigning him a <a href=\"https:\/\/alhilal.com\/en\/teams\/mens-team\/joao-cancelo-profile\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">squad number<\/a>, this despite reports saying for a long time that he was very close to re-joining FC Barcelona.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">That step may just be posturing, as it\u2019s understood Cancelo doesn\u2019t have a place in the Saudi club\u2019s squad with the signing of Mohammed Mahzari, a full-back, but it\u2019s threatening to make life complicated for Bar\u00e7a if they do not acquiesce to final demands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Cancelo has visibly enjoyed his time at Barcelona through two stints already. His latest term at Bar\u00e7a was a success, earning him the starting position and increasing his stock just as he embarked to play the World Cup with Portugal. After his country\u2019s early exit in the competition, reports have said he wanted nothing more than to return to Camp Nou.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Whispers in the transfer market point to personal terms being agreed for a while and agreement on a transfer fee \u2014 said to be around 10 million euro \u2014 being quite close. However, the last stage of the deal has been held up. Cancelo went back to training under Simone Inzaghi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Despite this, insiders say Barcelona are confident that the deal will go over the line by the end of the month. However, the latest news suggests Al-Hilal are looking to maximize the fee they will get in return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saudi club Al-Hilal have taken a step towards keeping Jo\u00e3o Cancelo by assigning him a squad number, this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[49043,403,99],"class_list":["post-809750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-barcelona-transfer-rumors-news","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}