Rumour Mongering: Gini Wijnaldum Signs Barcelona Pre-Contract

Last week, the rumour mongers in Spain claimed Gini Wijnaldum had made up his mind and that his future lay at Barcelona. Soon after, English claims came out to counter them, saying his mind still wasn’t made up and a Liverpool stay remained possible.

The week before we played out a similar story. And the week before that. So it’s hardly a surprise we seem set to play it out again now, only with a new twist—an escalation, if you will—on the Spanish side to kick things off on the Wijnaldum front today.

That’s because Todofichajes today say Wijnaldum has signed the pre-contract Barcelona put to him. That, while not announced yet, Wijnaldum’s move to Catalonia is in fact signed, sealed, and delivered to pleased Blaugranes boss Ronald Koeman.

It should be noted that this is the same outlet last week that kicked things off claiming Wijnaldum had rejected a Liverpool offer—a claim that was refuted a few hours later in the English press. The presumed reliability of the report is really quite low.

As was the case last week, though, with it out in the wild and being passed around English rumour sites it seems worth acknowledging—along with acknowledging the context of the outlet starting it and how the Wijnaldum news cycle has gone before.

Given all that, we rather expect to be here next week doing this all over again, even if the reality of Wijnaldum’s situation means there’s a good chance one of these days one of these seemingly sketchy and speculative rumours turns out to be right.