July 06, (THEWILL) – Barcelona will have a court summons on their hands soon as their former midfielder Matheus Fernandes has indicated a readiness to seek redress in court against the termination of his contract with the Catalan club.
THEWILL recalls that last week, as part of Barca’s ongoing wage bill reduction and budget cuts processes to satisfy the requirements necessary to meet La Liga obligations and re-sign their Argentine icon, Lionel Messi, Fernandes became part of the collateral damage.
His contract was shredded after having been at the club for less than 12 months with the general claim being that La Blaugrana reserved the right to terminate his contract if they believed he was not performing at a high-enough level to match club expectations.
The Joan Laporta-led club referenced Fernandes’s overall poor display in the 2020/2021 season, highlighting the minute-by-minute comparison between Fernandes and other midfielders in the squad. They also pointed to the performances of the Brazilian in training, where he was frequently below average in six of nine important categories in the metric.
These were presented to Matheus in an email that starkly informed him that the remaining four years of his contract had been terminated with immediate effect and he was no longer considered a Barca player.
It appeared to be the end of the road for the Brazilian midfielder but the 23-year-old was unprepared to go down without a fight and is ready to dispute the disrespect of general provisions of the agreement he signed with Barca. He has initiated moves to deal with the club over the unfair dismissal by Barcelona.
Matheus only managed to get just 17 minutes at the club in the time he was signed, which was a huge letdown from the initial excitement of joining Camp Nou. He will therefore argue that the club did not give him a fair chance to show his worth. By implication, he will claim that La Blaugrana set him up to fail and seek a redress.
He showed an inkling of this with his comments in a recent interview he granted Mundo Deportivo. Speaking of the time he had at Camp Nou, the Brazilian flat-out accused manager Ronald Koeman of having a personal problem with him, which led to his serious lack of play time.
Matheus gave an example: “One day I went to Koeman’s office and said: ‘Why haven’t I had played more? Did I play bad?’. He told me: ‘No, you played well, but I can’t put you on because I don’t count on you, you don’t have the quality to play for Barça’.
“I told him that if he doesn’t put me on, he can’t see if I don’t have the quality. If the club signed me, it was because of my quality. There must be something else. I always thought it was a personal thing because he didn’t talk to me, he did what he did. For me, it’s personal.
“It’s been a bit difficult for me because I came with the expectation to play, to grow as a footballer and as a person, but a strange thing happened to me, which is not playing, not having opportunities and always being out.
“I was training in positions that were not mine, playing as a right-back or in defence. In some training, I was not even included.”
He added: “There were days that I did not train. I stayed out doing finishing, shots on goal. I just warmed up, did some finishing, but I was not with the whole group. The days before the games, which were more tactical, I hardly trained with the group.”
It is not the best of times for Barca to face litigation but should Matheus go that far, they will have their day in court to tell their own side of the story and the law will take its course in a ruling with the potential to set a precedent in club/footballer relations going forward.
Clubs intending to layoff some deadwood players in their squads but have not pulled the trigger because of the legal implications of contract ties will be watching the resolution of the issue closely and however it swings, a legal precedent will have been set for the handling of these matters.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
