Barça-Ter Stegen now at all-out war amid renewed registration chaos

It’s another rocky off-season for FC Barcelona, involving more player registration chaos, and an all-out war between the club and their captain. 

Goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen wrote the words “three months,” and Barça fans have completely turned on him, while club executives are now questioning his fit for the captaincy. The German wrote those words in a social media post outlining that he needed surgery on his back and therefore would miss around three months of action.

The context to the fury surrounding this given time frame is that Barcelona are still in a delicate financial situation, and had ter Stegen been out for four months or longer, the club would have been able to designate 80% of his salary to register new signings in accordance with La Liga’s salary cap rules, of which Barça are still in breach. 

Despite being in breach of the salary cap rules, Barça have continued to spend. 

As things stand, players such as Joan García – who would be ter Stegen’s replacement in the first XI –, Wojciech Szczęsny, Marcus Rashford, Gerard Martín, and Roony Bardghji are all as yet unregistered. This means that Iñaki Peña is the only senior goalkeeper in FC Barcelona’s senior squad who is both registered to play and not injured. 

Last summer, Barça were in a similar scenario, unable to register Dani Olmo for the first two games of the season, before a long-term injury to Andreas Christensen opened up the possibility to get the Spain international greenlit in the La Liga books.

Fan ire

Provoking particular ire among Barça fans is the fact that ter Stegen announced on his personal social media channels that he would be out of action for three months before the club could say anything about the extent of the injury. This move was notable for how unusual it was, as it’s highly uncommon for players to manage their own injuries without the club and announce return times of their own accord. 

On Tuesday, August 5, Catalan sports daily Mundo Deportivo reported that ter Stegen refused to sign the consent form for the club to send the report on his injury and surgery to the La Liga Medical Committee to assess the severity of the injury. As such, the club have opened disciplinary proceedings against the player, potentially resulting in a sanction for ter Stegen.

Without ter Stegen’s sign-off, which is mandatory to send to the La Liga Medical Committee, the situation remains blocked. Players’ medical data are private and therefore ter Stegen has the right to withhold them from the Medical Committee, but such a scenario has never occurred before at the Catalan club. 

The feud between ter Stegen and Barcelona ramped earlier in the summer when the club signed Joan García from crosstown rivals Espanyol. Given the German’s age, injury record, and status as a high-earner with three years left on his contract, it’s no secret that the Catalans have been looking to offload ter Stegen this summer, but the player doesn’t want to leave the club. 

His injury meant that it was unlikely that a suitable destination club would come in to purchase ter Stegen and offer him comparable wages, so the club instead hoped that the requirement for surgery could provide a backdoor answer to registering the new signings, if he was sidelined for four months or longer. 

Instead, ter Stegen sent a message to Barça and the world by posting “three months.” 

Complicating matters further is that ter Stegen is still technically the club’s captain. Many sports outlets have been reporting that executives want the player stripped of the captaincy immediately, but the decision will be made by first team manager Hansi Flick in a vote among the players ahead of the start of the new season. Ter Stegen’s status as captain has also left many fans posting online about their bitter disappointment, claiming that his behaviour has been unfitting of a captain. 

The 2025/26 La Liga season kicks off in less than two weeks, with the champions opening their account away to Mallorca on August 16. Unless Barcelona find new revenue streams – in the form of player sales, or other economic ‘levers’ that president Joan Laporta so famously spoke of some summers ago – that will allow them to register players, Barça will go into the campaign with Iñaki Peña and an injured Marc-Andre ter Stegen as their only goalkeepers. 

The unprecedented situation between the club and the captain is casting a dark cloud over the blaugrana this pre-season. With three years remaining on his contract, it’s tough to see how ter Stegen regains the confidence of the Barça fans, especially if he is unable to play his way back into favour due to his injury.