It was confirmed on Friday by Palmeiras that they had completed the signing of Vitor Roque from Barcelona, following the termination of his loan at Real Betis. The 20-year-old forward has become their marquee signing this year, but his agent Andre Cury is already thinking about a return to European football.
Barcelona originally spent €30m on Roque, plus €30m in variables, which were not fulfilled. With his switch to Palmeiras, Barcelona get most of their money back, selling 80% of his rights for €25.5m plus €5m in variables, although these are thought to be difficult to achieve. Speaking to RAC1, Cury explained that the deal had been done to ‘help’ Barcelona and Director of Football Deco.
“Now we are doing the operation to help Deco and the club because they are not using the player. They take the money back, which today Barca need a lot, and the player continues his journey. Vitor is sold at almost the same price he arrived at. Barca recovers almost everything it invested,” he explained.
Cury also confirmed thast Roque ‘could return to Barca’ during the interview, and noted that the plan was for him to return to European football sooner rather than later.
He is a great player, a great boy. Things didn’t go well, as we all thought. I think that arriving in winter did not do him any good. He is a very young boy. He is going to take this path of returning to Brazil for one or two seasons and will return to Europe. At 21 or 22 years old, I think he will be back. The truth is that today football has changed a little because people want players to perform automatically, from one day to the next.
It was also confirmed that Betis’ move to sign Cucho Hernandez for €13m on deadline day was what motivated Roque and his camp to seek out other options.
“What happened is that Betis, already at the end of the window, signed Cucho. Then we counted how many goals he’s scored, because I think it is easy to score goals, but Vitor left with seven. When Betis made this move to buy a ‘9’ it is because they are discarding Vitor. We could not stay there on loan, it is very dangerous for a player to always be on loan because a player has to have an owner to take care of him.”
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Cury explained that previous leadership in the transfer department, Sporting Director Jordi Cruyff, and Director of Football Mateu Alemany, were involved in the operation.
“Time will prove Deco right with Vitor Roque because he is a great player. The first meeting I had was with Jordi Cruyff and with Mateu Alemany and with Deco, who were together, at the Princesa Sofía. The operation was carried out as normally as always. Barca recovers almost all of the money invested.”
The move for Roque has been heavily questioned in the Catalan capital, not least by presidential rival Victor Font. He has accused Deco of lying about the deal for Roque, and it has been reported that Deco is taking legal action against Font, although the latter says he has no knowledge of this. In addition, it was said last season that manager Xavi Hernandez was not in favour of signing Roque, and it certainly raised eyebrows that a Barcelona in a desperate situation in terms of their salary limit spent big on an unproven talent. Cury dismissed talk of underhand business as ‘nonsense’, and ‘things that aren’t true.’
