3 Barcelona Players Who Would Benefit from a Loan Move in 2016-17

Breaking into Barcelona’s first team is extremely difficult. Even players who come close, like Marc Bartra, eventually give up and drift away.

Beyond the golden generation that includes the likes of Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquets, no players from La Masia have been able to hold down a slot in the team.

Sometimes they develop better playing regular football away from Camp Nou before coming back and trying to make a stand, as Denis Suarez will attempt to show.

He learned new skills and more tactical awareness at Sevilla on loan and then Villarreal and has earned a place in Luis Enrique’s squad for the season ahead.

There are various players Barcelona don’t need around, like Douglas, Thomas Vermaelen and returned loanees Martin Montoya and Cristian Tello.

Obviously those players would in theory benefit from a loan out, but they would benefit more by being sold, and Barcelona would, too. So they have not been included in this list.

There are three main candidates for a loan, two from the current first-team squad and one from Barcelona B.

The latter is Wilfrid Kaptoum, who would thrive if given the chance to play at a Liga side, like Alen Halilovic did at Sporting Gijon last season. The same goes for Sergi Samper, even though he has just been promoted to Barcelona’s main squad.

There is a big problem facing both of those players and it was exacerbated by the club’s capture of Valencia midfielder Andre Gomes, late on Thursday night. There is too much competition for a place in Barcelona’s midfield area.

An incredible 11 players would say their best position at the club is in one of the three midfield slots. They are Sergio Busquets, Javier Mascherano, Rafinha, Arda Turan, Andres Iniesta, Ivan Rakitic, Denis Suarez and Sergi Roberto, on top of Samper and Kaptoum.

Although Mascherano will generally be used at centre-back and Roberto, you would imagine, at right-back, there are still too many players blocking the pair’s paths.

Barcelona youth football expert and Diario Sport writer Josep Capdevila thinks Samper will plug away at convincing the coach he is worthy of a place, during the pre-season fixtures and training sessions. He wrote:

The situation could, in theory, hurt Samper’s chances of developing after joining the …

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