Barcelona Director of Football Deco has not minced his words in a recent interview, firing shots at both Athletic Club and Nico Williams, or his agent more precisely. Captain Marc-Andre ter Stegen also came in for some heat from Barcelona’s transfer chief.

One of the stories of the summer was the signing of Joan Garcia from Espanyol for €25m, despite Marc-Andre ter Stegen being fully fit at the time. With ter Stegen out injured, he has a tough task to regain his spot ahead of Garcia, but Deco explained to MD that there were no plans to allow the German out of the door in the summer.

“The thing is, there’s nothing for Marc in our plans right now. We’re having goalkeeping issues. If Marc were available, he’d surely be playing. He has a contract, and that’s how it is.”

Deco explains decision to sign Joan Garcia with ter Stegen available

In his eyes, there was no obvious issue with signing Garcia despite ter Stegen theoretically being the club’s number one. Last season the Blaugrana did end up bringing Wojciech Szczesny out of retirement to replace the injured ter Stegen.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other. Too many problems have been created here where none exist. First, Marc is a great goalkeeper, captain of the team. He has a history at the club that we respect and value, and he can still make history because he’s 33, and that’s not an advanced age. The issue is that it wasn’t because of Marc.”

“When he gets injured, we realised we are short on goalkeepers and we turn to look at options in goal, something that wasn’t in our plans. We wanted a young goalkeeper; if we were looking for one with immediate results, we’d look at a 28 or 30-year-old. Why a young one? Because he can give you something in the present and the future. That was the idea with Joan. That’s how it is. What happens here is that the issues become bigger than they really are.”
Some wondered if the club had spoken with ter Stegen beforehand, then there might have been less controversy, and would have perhaps gone down better with ter Stegen. Deco outright rejected the idea of explaining a club’s transfer decisions to a player.

“But let’s see. This doesn’t exist, no matter what, to explain any player. I repeat, there’s no issue, there’s no ‘Ter Stegen case’ or ‘Joan Garcia case’. We focused on goalkeepers when Marc got injured the first time; we’re not looking for a replacement for Marc. We’re having a problem because when we turned around, we only had Inaki [Pena], and the other goalkeepers are very young. One of the things, before starting to sign any goalkeepers. That’s why we have to remember and not focus solely on the controversial issues—we spoke with Alexanko and Dela, the head of goalkeeping, and we said Ander and Diego had to play.”

“And one had to be with us and the other play in the reserve team. And we started working in that direction because they’re the two we believe are closest, but we didn’t have a third goalkeeper, and we have to have one that the club trusts, if possible. So we turned to looking at goalkeepers. And it got even worse when Marc got injured last season. It’s a matter of planning, of not keeping a problem for the future. Afterwards, the coach decides who’s going to play.”

‘Sometimes players make things public that should be internal’ – Deco

In what appeared to be a clear show of ter Stegen’s frustration with the way it was handled, ter Stegen initially announced on social media he would be out with his back injury for three months. This made it more difficult for Barcelona to use his injury to activate to the emergency injury rule, and register Garcia.

“I’m not going to go into those issues. [It’s] Probably because of his last back injury, which sidelined him for two and a half or three months, I imagine he was hoping to return early. From there on, those questions should be put to him; we’re not going into that.”
Deco then chastised ter Stegen for his public statement on the matter.

Flick: "Szczesny is a club player and with him we won three titles last year. Of course he's ready."

— barcacentre (@barcacentre) September 30, 2025

“The player is free to make his statements, perhaps to explain his personal issues, and we don’t have any clear rules to say he can’t do that. Instagram has become quite complicated these days, in my opinion. Sometimes players make things public that should be internal, but everyone is free, and there’s no controversy in that regard.”