This Barcelona player was world champion with Mbappé and could retire at 30

One of the reasons why Barcelona has been unable to compete for the Champions League title against the top teams in Europe for several years is the bad decisions of the club's chiefs. Over the last decade they have spent a fortune on signing players who then showed disappointing performances and left for very little money. That caused serious financial problems that now prevent them from having a top level squad.

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Some examples of bad investments with Philippe Coutinho and Ousmane Dembélé, who arrived in 2017 to replace Neymar and never lived up to expectations, so they left years later without leaving a good memory in Catalonia. But they are not the only ones. Something similar also happened with Samuel Umtiti.

The French defender arrived at Barcelona in 2016 from Olympique Lyonnais in exchange for more than $30 million and in his first two years he showed excellent performances that allowed him not only to earn a place in the team but also to be called up by Didier Deschamps for the France National Team. In fact, at the Russia 2018 World Cup he was a key part of the winning team, alongside stars like Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappé.

But then came the problems. He began to have knee injuries that prevented him from playing normally in Barcelona, until finally the club decided not to use him anymore and he spent a whole year without playing before being loaned to Lecce. Finally in 2023 he left the Catalan side and agreed to join Lille, but things didn't work out there either.

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What happened to him?

Coach Paulo Fonseca revealed at a press conference a few days ago: "Umtiti underwent surgery on Wednesday. Everything went well, now he has to recover. I don't know yet how long he will be unavailable. Will he play again this season? Maybe. I honestly don't know. Surely he will have the opportunity to play again, but it's difficult to say". From this, the French press is speculating about the defender's future, and it is even rumored that he could retire despite being only 30 years old.