Frenkie de Jong kept walking. As the announcer read his name at the Spotify Camp Nou on Wednesday, part of the crowd whistled and booed. The Dutch midfielder did not turn his head. He was still in club colours after seven seasons, but on the pitch he was standing next to a new interim captain, in a role he no longer held.
The Joan Gamper Trophy squad presentation is Barcelona’s traditional pre-season launch. On Wednesday the crowd went off script twice: once for a player who has been at the club since 2019, and once for a signing they had not yet met.
The captaincy Flick rearranged
De Jong was next in line for the armband going into the summer. He is not anymore, at least for now. With Marc-André ter Stegen and Ronald Araujo both gone from the senior leadership group, head coach Hansi Flick has named Raphinha the interim captain, with Eric García and Pedri as deputies. De Jong, sidelined by a medial collateral ligament tear in his right knee suffered at the World Cup, was left out of the provisional order.
Flick has framed the decision as strictly temporary until the squad settles after the 1 September transfer deadline.
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“Frenkie de Jong is not available right now and I have provisionally decided the captains until we hold the vote,” Flick said.
De Jong has refused surgery on the knee. Going under the knife would keep him out for at least four months but would also, ara.cat reports, have allowed Barcelona to use 80% of his €18m annual salary to register other players under La Liga rules, a mechanism the club has previously used for injuries to Ter Stegen and Andreas Christensen.
Romero’s reporting the fans were echoing
The boos were not only about the injury. In the weeks before the presentation, Spanish journalist Gerard Romero reported that De Jong had refused to play against Atlético Madrid in last season’s Champions League and that his relationship with Flick had broken down. De Jong denied both accounts to Goal.
“Gerard Romero reported, and he himself set all of this in motion, that I refused to play against Atlético in the Champions League last year. That is not true. It is simply not correct,” De Jong said.
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“Romero said that my relationship with the coach is very bad. But none of that is true. My relationship with him is actually very good.”
The stadium shook for Rodri
Minutes later, the same building was unrecognisable. When the announcer reached shirt number 16, the Camp Nou “seemed to shake,” BarçaUniversal reported, with fans chanting “Rodri, Rodri, Rodri” as club president Joan Laporta watched from his seat with a wide smile.
Rodri, 30, arrived from Manchester City this week as the 2026 World Cup Golden Ball winner after leading Spain to the title. Manchester City accepted an initial fee of around £65.4m on 17 August, with Spanish outlets reporting a package that could rise to about €76.5m with add-ons over a four-year contract.
He had trained only once with his new team-mates by the time he was presented and was not in the squad for the Gamper Trophy friendly against Al-Ahly of Egypt that followed. His debut is expected next weekend against Elche in Barcelona’s La Liga opener.
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