Bellerin expected to join Sporting on Tuesday as Barça make small saving

Bellerin expected to join Sporting on Tuesday as Barça make small saving

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The Catalan club will save on his salary and possibly make money in add-ons

FC Barcelona are close to completing the transfer of Héctor Bellerín to Sporting Club de Portugal. It would be the second departure from the squad in this winter transfer window after Memphis Depay's move to Atlético de Madrid. The club need to get make space on wage bill to try to make a signing on the last day of the window, with La Liga making it difficult for them to register possible new additionw.

There are two factors that prevent the deal to take Bellerín to Portugal from being finalised at this time. The first is that some last minute problems have arisen in the transfer of Pedro Porro to Tottenham. When everything seemed to be in order, on Monday morning there were some setbacks in the payment formula and the transfer of the player was put on 'stand by'. And if Porro cannot leave Sporting, the Portuguese club will automatically forget about Bellerín. In principle, the two operations should be unravelled on Tuesday, the last day of the window.

The other factor is the sole responsibility of the negotiation between FC Barcelona and Sporting Club. Needing to 'scrape' as much money as possible in all operations, Barça's director of football, Mateu Alemany, wanted to close the transfer by charging a small fixed fee and introducing some variables. His counterpart at the Portuguese club, Hugo Viana, has ruled out paying a fixed fee for Bellerín but has been open to accepting small variables, such as paying for the achievement of a title or appearance packages. In any case, the amounts that are being discussed are small, always less than €1 million. In the last few hours, they have been finalising these small differences and are still waiting to see what happens with Porro.

Both parties are convinced that the deal can be completed on Tuesday. Sporting will have a replacement for Porro at right-back for a not-too-high price and Barça will save 50% of his season's salary and could end up collecting a small fee if some variables are met.

Bellerín used to last minute deals

The player has become accustomed in recent years to being a protagonist in the final days of the window. He arrived at Barça this summer on the very last day after leaving Arsenal in the morning and signing for Barça late in the afternoon. His loan move to Betis was also completed on 31 August just minutes before the market closed the year before. On Tuesday, once again, he could put an end to his time at Barça to join Sporting just as the bell rings.

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