Not long ago, the idea of Barcelona beating Real Madrid to a major signing like Rodri would have sounded fanciful.

While Barca have spent recent summers wondering whether new arrivals could even be registered, their Clasico rivals simply identified the world’s biggest stars and brought them in.

Madrid recruiting Jude Bellingham in 2023 and Kylian Mbappe in 2024 reinforced the sense that, when Europe’s best players reached a crossroads, the Bernabeu would be their destination.

Since Lionel Messi left in tears in 2021 — Barca’s finances essentially forcing them to let go of the greatest player of all time, who then joined Paris Saint-Germain — the Catalans have managed to land some top players.

Robert Lewandowski came in August 2022. Dani Olmo arrived in 2024. Anthony Gordon was signed in a deal worth €80million (£68.5m; $92.4m) from Newcastle United before the World Cup.

Barca say they are now in a stronger position financially — thanks mostly to increasing revenues following their return to the Camp Nou — and that their move for Rodri (who Manchester City appear to value at €80million) does not affect their pursuit of Atletico Madrid’s Julian Alvarez.

For years, they have had to navigate La Liga’s spending rules, coming up with creative financial solutions while trying to rebuild a squad capable of competing in the Champions League.

Barcelona became a club who searched for opportunities rather than dictated the market. Free agents, players willing to lower their salary to wear the blaugrana shirt, experienced professionals nearing the final chapter of their careers and promising youngsters became the blueprint.

To Barca’s credit, it worked.

Combined with one of the finest generations their youth academy La Masia has ever produced, Barcelona have won three of the past four La Liga titles (Madrid were champions in 2023-24) and finally returned to the latter stages of elite continental competition.

But these successful steps have not fully restored Barca’s prestige. This is where Rodri comes in.

Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in the World Cup final on July 19 (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Barcelona signing Rodri would give manager Hansi Flick arguably the best holding midfielder in world football, and the closest player the modern game has produced to Barca legend Sergio Busquets.

The greater significance would lie elsewhere. Convincing the man who claimed the 2024 Ballon d’Or and a World Cup-winning captain, long admired by Real Madrid and exactly the type of player they have traditionally expected to sign, to choose Barcelona instead? That would send a message.

The last genuine superstar to have done the same might well be Neymar back in 2013. Having attracted serious interest from Madrid, the Brazil forward, then aged 21, chose the Camp Nou when moving from Santos.

Barcelona back then were a different proposition. They had won the treble in 2009 and would do so again in 2015, with Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar in full swing. Fans yearn for a return to those days, and Barca president Joan Laporta knows it.

If there is one thing that cannot be denied about Laporta, it is that he is a professional seller of dreams. He knows what the business is all about. He knows what supporters want to hear, and he gives it to them.

But even the 64-year-old’s expertly populist addresses have had to be somewhat measured of late, given the club’s financial situation. Rodri would give him a chance to let loose.

The 30-year-old Spain captain, who was voted the World Cup’s best player after victory against Argentina in the final, represents the type of signing Barcelona had almost forgotten they could make.

Rodri would be leaving Manchester City after six seasons (Oscar del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images)

“Replacing Sergio Busquets is almost impossible,” Barcelona sporting director Deco said in an interview with TV3 in February 2024.

“He’s a very special, very unique player. There’s no one like him on the market, and even if there were, he wouldn’t come because they wouldn’t sell him. The one who comes closest is Rodri, who’s at City, but I imagine City wouldn’t sell him to us or to anyone else.”

At the time, Deco’s words felt less like an assessment of Rodri’s quality than a reflection of Barcelona’s reality. Ironically, Barca are no longer desperate for a defensive midfielder.

Xavi spent two years searching for Busquets’ successor before eventually adapting without one. Under Flick, Marc Casado performed well, Marc Bernal emerged as a brilliant prospect, Eric Garcia has played expertly in that holding midfield role and we have finally seen the best of Frenkie de Jong.

In this context, the club seemed to have shifted their priorities elsewhere. Gordon and Karim Adeyemi’s arrivals addressed the attack, with midfield arguably the most crowded area of the squad before De Jong’s recent injury.

Rodri would therefore not arrive because Barcelona lack options. He would arrive because opportunities to sign players of his stature rarely present themselves.

Barcelona will not be transformed by Rodri. Nor do they need him to prove they are back. Winning trophies under Flick has already gone a long way towards doing that.

But, for the first time in years, Barcelona would be the club setting the market agenda, rather than trying to keep up with it.

Perhaps that would be the biggest victory of all. Not just signing one of the world’s best midfielders, but becoming the club that players like Rodri choose again.

“I’ve learned from my mistakes. I take full ownership of everything that’s happened to me. That’s why I always say to myself, ‘I got myself in this mess, I am going to get myself out of it.’”

Sat in the foyer of his Manchester apartment block, Brandon Williams is reflecting on his life in football to date, from the highs of playing 51 times for Manchester United to the dark, lonely moments when he struggled to get out of bed and fell out of love with the game.

Williams admits he is a cautionary tale, a warning of what can happen when a young footballer at one of the world’s biggest clubs is thrust into the spotlight with little idea of how to navigate some of the pitfalls that come with that.

That all came to a head when Williams, who admits to having a self-destructive streak, was last year given a 14-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, for dangerous driving after causing a crash while speeding at 99mph.

Yet Williams, who says that incident made him grow up as a person, is now determined to rebuild his football career.

He has spent pre-season training with Rotherham United, who play three leagues below Manchester United, as he tries to work his way back into the sport. The last time he played a full 90 minutes was on loan for Ipswich Town against West Bromwich Albion in November 2023.

He does not yet know whether he will be offered a contract by Rotherham.

“I’ve let a lot of people down, to be honest, and I want to prove a lot of people wrong as well,” he says. “That’s one thing that is left to do in my life, to get back onto the football pitch and show what I can do.”

In this interview, Williams opens up about his time at Manchester United, when things started to go wrong, his mental struggles and his message to younger players tempted to go down the same path as him.

Before we get there, though, let’s rewind to the 2019-20 season at Manchester United — the high point of his career.

Williams, from Harpurhey, a tough suburb of Manchester, is United through and through, having joined his boyhood club aged seven, and worked his way up through the youth teams.

He made his first-team debut in September 2019, a penalty-shootout victory over Rochdale in the EFL Cup.

“It was amazing,” he recalls. “People always ask me, ‘Were you nervous?’. It’s hard to explain unless you experience it yourself. I never felt the pressure or felt worried, it was just excitement and the butterflies were going… because you’re asking me to go on a football pitch, something I’d done for 12 years. It was just about keeping to my game.”

He went on to become a fixture in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side that season, making his Premier League debut against Liverpool in October, and scoring his first United goal the following month.

He was named man of the match in a Europa League victory over Partizan Belgrade in October, with Solskjaer gushing about his performance, telling reporters: “The boy has no fear, he is as brave as a lion and he got us the win.” Around the same time, Ed Woodward, United’s former chief executive, told reporters on a Europa League trip to Astana, Kazakhstan, including The Athletic, that Williams had become United’s first-choice left-back ahead of Luke Shaw.

Brandon Williams was man of the match in this game against Partizan Belgrade (Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)

For Williams, who was still living with his mum on the council estate in Harpurhey, everything was happening at a dizzying speed.

How did he cope with the attention?

“I found it difficult, especially being from Manchester as well,” he says. “It wasn’t just me who got affected, it was my family as well.”

It was during his breakthrough season at United that the Covid pandemic took hold, halting the football and his momentum.

“It’s funny because we were all on our laptops on Zoom and all the players were in their big mansions with their pools and gyms and I was in my bedroom at my mum’s house, using a suitcase as a dumbbell,” he laughs.

As he was now recognisable on the estate, Williams found it hard to get out for runs without being stopped or mobbed by fans.

When the season finally resumed again in June, he felt his fitness levels had suffered in comparison to his team-mates.

It was around this time he made the decision to move out and live by himself.

“To this day, it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done,” he says. “I really should have stayed.”

Why?

“I just think as a 19-year-old going to move away from home, playing for United, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong,” he reflects. “I was too immature. I wasn’t aware of a lot of things as well, so I should have stayed with my parents at home to keep that situation under control.”

Because he moved into a bigger house, he says there were regularly people around, which acted as a distraction he now realises was unhealthy.

Williams says his parents — mum Lisa, who still runs The Snack Attack cafe in Harpurhey, and dad Paul, a window-fitter — helped to keep him grounded.

The following season, Williams found opportunities harder to come by and was limited to just 14 appearances, making only five starts.

Falling down the pecking order at United, he moved on loan to Norwich City, who were then in the Premier League, for 2021-22. Although he found it a tough adjustment living more than four hours away from home, he was grateful for the chance to play regular first-team football.

When Williams returned to United, he did so with an injury and a new manager in Erik ten Hag. He went on to play just five minutes that entire season.

The defender struggled with that feeling of being left out of the squad entirely.

“The difficulty is when you’re not being told anything and you’re just in the dark,” he says. “You’re just a passenger at that point.”

However, it seemed there might be a reprieve going into the 2023-24 season when he featured in United’s pre-season matches in the United States. “But when I got back, I just wasn’t involved in anything, so I was like, ‘what is going on here?’,” he adds.

Eager to play again, Williams linked up with Kieran McKenna for a loan move to Ipswich Town, working with a coach he knew well from his time at United. It started brightly, with Williams believing he was playing his best football since 2019-20.

“Then a lot of stuff happened in the October-November time,” he says. “Kieran could see that I wasn’t myself. On the New Year’s Day game, we had Stoke away. He said, ‘I want you to go to Manchester and have two weeks off. I want you to come back down here as Brandon, I don’t want to see this Brandon’. I was like, ‘OK, no problem’.”

Brandon Williams’ time at Ipswich Town did not end well (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

However, while Ipswich went on to win promotion to the Premier League that season, Williams played no further part — remaining in Manchester as his off-field issues escalated, which included some problems with friends.

Recalling that time, Williams says he was speaking with psychologist Michael Farrell, who he knew from his time in United’s academy.

“He would come and knock on my door in the morning, because I had an apartment in town, and he’d be like, ‘Brandon, come on, we’re going to get a coffee’, because I’d literally just be in bed all day. It helped me have that to get up and be like, ‘Come on, stop feeling sorry for yourself’.” Williams also cites the support of friends, including those he played with in United’s academy, who rallied around to help during that tough time.

It was during that summer of 2024 that Williams was released by United at the end of his contract, ending a 16-year association with the club.

How did that feel?

“At the time I was just like, ‘Whatever, it is what it is’, but I was in a dark space,” he says. “And then a couple of months passed and I was thinking, ‘Oh my god, what have I done?’. Then it hit me that was what I’d known all my life from seven years of age. It was a gutting feeling, especially when you are by yourself and you’re just thinking about it. It’s a dark place.”

It was during this low period that Williams fell out of love with football.

“I didn’t want to play football again,” he says. “It was difficult but I just knew I had to go and train for my mental side of things — I knew I had to do something. I had no plans on going back to football for that whole year. It went on until the start of the new year that I was like, ‘Right, I miss this now, I’m ready to go back, I am ready to get back into football’.”

Away from the pitch, Williams’ problems were mounting.

In May last year, he was given that suspended prison sentence and ordered to complete 180 hours of community service after pleading guilty to dangerous driving. He was also handed a three-year driving ban.

The Crown Prosecution Service said Williams, who was with a female passenger, was driving at up to 99mph in a 70mph zone in his Audi A3, with a balloon at his mouth, during the incident on August 20, 2023. He then collided with a Ford Fiesta and crashed into the central reservation.

How does he reflect on that?

“It made me grow up as a person and realise that this is real life, this isn’t GTA (Grand Theft Auto) or something like that,” Williams replies. “It was a proper wake-up call. Since then it was about building and changing a reputation that I had and that’s not me.”

Williams says the crash happened at a time when he was in a self-destructive mode, when he was not thinking about the consequences of his actions.

“I wasn’t the Brandon that everyone knows,” he adds. “I was a completely different person.”

During the hearing, Williams’ defence lawyer, Richard Littler KC, explained how the footballer described himself as someone “who had little guidance on the pitfalls of being a young, high-earning footballer”.

Asked to elaborate on that, Williams replies: “It does put a lot on you — there are not many people who have done what I’ve done, so it is difficult. You’re at a club that’s worldwide but you feel very lonely sometimes and it’s difficult to navigate what’s right from wrong, especially at that age, because you’ve got the freedom to do whatever you want.”

Williams hopes his case acts as a warning to others.

Brandon Williams hopes other players can learn from his mistakes (George Wood/Getty Images)

As he reflects, he feels there was not enough support in place for young footballers. He suggests young players at big clubs should do some form of business education alongside their football for several years, or be made to set aside a certain amount of their earnings that they cannot access until they turn 21. He also believes it would be beneficial for young players to speak with a former player from the same club who had been through similar experiences.

“I was 19, I was like, ‘I know what I’m doing’, but I was immature and stupid,” he says.

Williams found it hard to trust people, as he feared they might take advantage of him.

He remembers signing a four-year contract with United in August 2020, on greatly enhanced terms.

“Even my family had not seen that (money) before, so then it’s difficult even for them to navigate. It was like, ‘What do we do?’. They were in the same boat as me. And then it’s just easy to p**s it all up the wall.”

Another issue raised during the hearing was nitrous oxide, otherwise known as laughing gas. As The Athletic previously reported, the court heard that while Williams had a balloon in his mouth and had used nitrous oxide in the past, he was not using it in the moments before the collision.

Williams says he regrets taking laughing gas in the past.

“I look back at myself now and think what an idiot I was. That is not what an athlete does, it’s not what a footballer does, it’s not what a grown man does. It’s stupid stuff.”

He explains how his use of laughing gas, now a Class C drug — that would not show up in a footballer’s drug testing — was a form of escapism.

“It makes everything 10 times worse, but you don’t realise that when you’re doing it at the time,” he says.

He wants to warn others about its dangers.

“I’ve seen people who can’t walk anymore,” he says. “And that just takes one of them (one balloon), it’s horrible.”

Now, though, Williams, who is in a new and settled relationship, is looking forward again. Injury meant he made only one appearance for Hull City last season, but he enjoyed his time there.

He is driven by a desire to make his family proud.

“My Nan is on at me because she’s got a frame where it’s me playing at 18, 19, 20 and 21,” he explains. “Every time I go and see her, she points at it and says, ‘I want you to be doing that again’. That’s my motivation.”

Williams, who is 25, is now able to look back on his time with United and feel a sense of achievement — and enjoys regaling people with tales about the “wizard” Juan Mata in training and the “absolutely unreal” Paul Pogba.

“I’ve only just started to look back and be like, ‘I actually did something. I actually played for United 51 times’. It’s something to be proud of,” he says.

He is still in contact with the likes of Harry Maguire, Marcus Rashford and Bruno Fernandes.

He explains how Fernandes still checks in on him and is happy to sort him out with match tickets. “That’s why he’s the captain, he’s an unreal guy.”

Williams is now determined to resurrect his football career.

“I know it’s not going to be a quick process, I know I’m not going to be in the Premier League next year,” he says. “I’m ready to climb the mountain and get back to the top of it.”

It came too late for the previous head coach Roberto De Zerbi, but the age profiles in Brighton & Hove Albion’s squad have started to change this summer.

De Zerbi’s departure, in May 2024, revolved around Brighton’s recruitment strategy at the time.

Broadly speaking, their signings back then fell into two categories: talented youth signed from all over the world — based on the data bank of the club’s owner-chairman Tony Bloom — blended with a group of senior pros in their thirties to set standards, aid the development of those youngsters and so help multiply their resale values.

However, De Zerbi wanted more signings that fell in between — players in their mid-to-late twenties with established track records.

This did not fit the model at that stage of the club’s journey.

The Italian, now back in the Premier League as Tottenham Hotspur boss after a spell at French side Marseille, parted company with the club at the end of the 2023-24 season, after leading them to European qualification for the first time in their history a year earlier.

His reign, spanning nearly two full seasons, ended with a 4-1 defeat on aggregate against Roma of his homeland in the Europa League’s round of 16 and a drop from finishing sixth in the Premier League in 2023 to 11th in his final campaign.

Fast forward to Saturday’s 3-0 friendly win against Roma at the Amex Stadium under De Zerbi’s successor, Fabian Hurzeler, secured by goals from Georginio Rutter and Yasin Ayari (two).

Goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen, centre-back Lewis Dunk and midfielder Pascal Gross (and he left the same summer De Zerbi did, and was then re-signed in this year’s winter window) are the only players still at Brighton from the starting line-up for the 1-0 second-leg win at home against the Serie A club in March 2024. That victory was a futile exercise in restoring dignity after a thrashing in Rome a week before.

Roberto De Zerbi after Brighton’s Europa League round-of-16 defeat to Roma (Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images)

The extent of the churn since then runs deeper: just nine members of that 23-strong matchday squad are left.

The biggest shift has been this summer’s dismantling of the old guard and the number of players in their mid- to late-twenties signed across Hurzeler’s two seasons — filling the void between those colleagues with youthful promise and the long-serving veterans.

Danny Welbeck, the now 35-year-old who scored the goal against Roma two years ago, and Joel Veltman, 34, are the most recent exits, moving to Chelsea and West Ham United, respectively.

They followed 40-year-old James Milner, Solly March, 32, and Adam Webster, 31, who all left earlier in the summer. Milner retired after breaking the Premier League all-time appearances record, while March and Webster were released following long-term injuries.

Dunk, the team’s 34-year-old captain, Gross and reserve goalkeeper Jason Steele, both 35, have maintained a core of experience, but half of the six signings this summer highlight the move towards creating a greater balance in the squad’s ages.

Central defenders Pascal Struijk and Michael Svoboda will be 27 when the season starts later this month. Struijk has four seasons of Premier League experience with Leeds United, while Austria international centre-back Svoboda played for two seasons in Serie A and four in Serie B, the Italian second tier, with Venezia.

Portuguese right-back Costinha, 26, played in the Champions League and the Greek Super League for Olympiacos last season. Before that, he spent three years in his homeland’s top flight with Rio Ave.

The other three newcomers maintain Brighton’s usual policy of targeting global young talent.

Croatian centre-back Luka Vuskovic, signed from Tottenham, and Nigerian winger Zadok Yohanna, arriving from Swedish side AIK, are both 19. Portuguese winger Rodrigo Rego, a 21-year-old brought in from Benfica in his homeland, has been loaned out for the season to Spanish second-division club Castellon.

Luka Vuskovic joined Brighton from Tottenham this summer (Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images)

“Of course, big personalities, big leaders, have left the club,” said Hurzeler on Thursday, speaking at an annual fans’ forum hosted by BBC Radio Sussex at the Amex.

“We are all very happy for what they have given. It’s not always that you can carry on, carry on, carry on. It’s like in a successful company, you can’t always say, ‘Oh, we are successful now, let’s just keep going’.  At one point, you have to make changes that are effective.

“Last season, I can remember many times Georginio Rutter or Charalampos Kostoulas (both alternatives to Welbeck) warming up beside me, and everyone was singing about Rutter or saying ‘Babis’ (Kostoulas) needs to play more minutes. That’s the opportunity now, for them to step up.

“On top of that, we have Ferdi Kadioglu: best football age, Mats Wieffer: best football age (both are 26), Bart Verbruggen has played so many years now in the Premier League (three seasons). We have added Pascal Struijk: best football age. Svoboda was a leader, captain of his club. We have added some great characters, and that’s also an opportunity for these players to step up.”

Hurzeler turned to his old guard last season during a crisis, before righting the ship to help Brighton finish eighth for the second year in a row and secure a place in the UEFA Conference League’s final qualifying round (almost certainly against Tromso of Norway) later this month.

Dunk, Milner, Gross and Welbeck all started in the 2-0 win at Brentford in February, while Veltman came off the bench in the second half to help secure only Brighton’s second league victory in 14 games going back to the end of November.

The average age of Hurzeler’s 10 outfield starters that day was 29, which was fine in an emergency but is unsustainable long-term in a league full of youthful pace, athleticism and energy.

The transfer business in and out of the club this summer has gone part of the way to addressing that issue.