Former Barcelona midfielder Sergio Busquets has taken up an assistant coaching role with the Catalan club’s reserve team.

In a statement on Monday, Barcelona said that Busquets, who made 722 appearances for the club during his career, will join Juliano Belletti’s Barca Atletic backroom staff while he completes his coaching qualifications in what is the 38-year-old’s first non-playing role.

Busquets retired from his playing career at the end of the 2025 Major League Soccer season, having spent two and a half years playing for Inter Miami alongside former Barcelona team-mates Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Jordi Alba.

Barca Atletic, previously known as Barcelona B, largely features players from the club’s ‘La Masia’ academy. They competed in Segunda Division, the second tier of Spanish football, as recently as the 2017-18 season and will feature in the fourth tier this term. Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsi, Marc Casado and Hector Fort are among the recent examples of players to step up to the first team from the reserve set-up.

Sergio Busquets s’incorpora al Barça Atlètic com a tècnic assistent

La llegenda blaugrana torna al Club i s’integra en l’equip de treball de Juliano Belletti mentre realitza el curs d’entrenador

🔗 👉🏼 https://t.co/viYfmGhp6h

💙❤️ pic.twitter.com/0m8BqhO1Ks

— Barça Atlètic (@FCBarcelonaB) August 17, 2026

Busquets spent 18 years with Barcelona, joining the club’s youth ranks in 2005, and entering the first-team picture three years later.

He won nine La Liga titles and three Champions Leagues, as part of an iconic midfield alongside Xavi and Andres Iniesta. He made the third-highest number of appearances of any player in the club’s history, behind only Messi and Xavi.

Busquets also enjoyed major international success with Spain, winning the 2010 World Cup and European Championship two years later, earning 143 caps.

Even in the latter years of his playing career, Busquets remained a regular for Inter Miami. He made 56 appearances in all competitions in 2025, his final season with the club, as they won the MLS Cup.

The jersey worn by Michael Jordan in Game 3 of the 1998 NBA Finals, when he would go on to win his sixth and final championship during “The Last Dance” season for the 1990s Chicago Bulls dynasty, will be sold through auction house Joopiter this fall. One of the most significant pieces of Jordan memorabilia to surface publicly, the jersey could set sales records as the collectibles market continues to climb to new heights.

With the series tied following a pair of road games against John Stockton, Karl Malone and the Utah Jazz, the Bulls returned home and delivered a 96-54 rout, taking a 2-1 series lead. Jordan scored a game-high 24 points on 7-of-14 shooting. Chicago would go on to win Game 4 and Game 6 to secure the dynasty’s second three-peat and sixth title in eight years.

“’The Last Dance’ represents really one of the defining chapters in the history of all sports, not just basketball,” Caitlin Donovan, Joopiter’s global head of sales, told The Athletic. “It’s really more than just the conclusion of (Jordan’s) career with the Bulls, it really marked the culmination of one of the greatest dynasties that I feel was ever assembled.”

Bidding for the jersey, which has been photo-matched to Game 3 by third-party authenticator MeiGray, opens on Sept. 15. Should the jersey reach its pre-sale estimate, it would challenge the record for a basketball jersey sold at public auction. The current high is the $10.1 million paid in 2022 for Jordan’s “Last Dance” jersey from Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals. That was the most expensive piece of game-worn memorabilia of any kind before Babe Ruth’s 1932 World Series “called shot” jersey sold for $24.12 million in 2024. Jordan’s ’98 Finals Game 3 jersey could challenge that record, though. Both the game-used memorabilia and Jordan collectibles markets have arguably never been hotter, as wealthy investors pour into the sports collectibles world.

Jordan remains the most searched athlete across all sports on eBay each month, consistently beating out the top stars of the current era. According to GemRate, which tracks trading card grading and sales data, nearly $19.4 million was spent on Jordan cards on eBay alone in July, the most spent on any single athlete in a month so far this year.

“Well (Jordan’s Game 3 jersey) encompasses all of the key components of why the sports memorabilia hobby has become an asset class,” MeiGray founder Barry Meisel told The Athletic. “You have the greatest player of all time, you have the ‘Last Dance’ and his final championship. Within the context of NBA collectors … you have all the elements of a relic that stands among the greatest of all time.”

Game-used Jordan jerseys remain incredibly scarce compared to game-worn pieces that reach public auction from today’s stars. Current NBA players wear jerseys in multiple games far less often than previous generations, and will often wear multiple jerseys in a single game as collectibility and revenue generation become bigger concerns for teams and leagues.

“Jordan remains a very, very, very rare relic, certainly in comparison to the GOATs of today — the LeBrons, the Stephen Currys, because it was a different era,” Meisel said. “There were no game-worn jersey programs. Teams weren’t putting a jersey on a player’s back every game or every couple of games.”

Jordan’s Game 3 jersey also represents a key consignment for Joopiter, which was founded by musician Pharrell Williams in 2022. Joopiter has previously sold key Jordan pieces, including a signed Michael Jordan rookie card for $2.5 million as well as signed and game-worn Air Jordans.

“It would be deeply significant for any auction house — I do acknowledge the fact that we are quite green in our long trajectory compared to some of the other houses,” Donovan said. “I think that Joopiter being able to offer this item says we understand the collectibles market and we are putting storytelling first. I think our storytelling-first approach and our understanding of current culture has led us to these exceptional items.”

Joopiter will support the auction with two live events in September. Jordan’s jersey will be on display at the Free Parking gallery in New York City from Sept. 15-20 and at Canon Collectibles in Los Angeles from Sept. 21-26.

“I think with an object at this level of importance, emotion is key,” Donovan said. “We want this to appeal to the potential buyer at a great level, at a record-breaking price … but I also think it’s important to Joopiter that a lot of the storytelling around sports goes to the fans and to the people that not only love Michael Jordan, love the Bulls, love ‘The Last Dance,’ but kind of know where they were in that time.

“Oftentimes the moment had a pretty exceptional impact on their lives, so opening it up to the public for us was really important for this object.”

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Great Britain finished top of the medals table at the European Aquatics Championships in Paris after Keanna MacInnes helped them win two golds on Sunday’s final day of competition.

The 24-year-old sealed victory in the 200m butterfly with a new Scottish record of two minutes 5.90 seconds, then swam the fly leg as Great Britain won the women’s 4×100m medley.

Angharad Evans followed up her gold in the individual 100m breaststroke with the fastest ever women’s relay breaststoke leg as the team, which also included Lauren Cox and Freya Colbert, stormed to victory in a championship record three minutes 53.50 seconds.

The relay win secured top spot on the medal charts over Italy, whom they beat by a tenth of a second, with Great Britain finishing on 14 golds to second-placed Italy’s 13.

The British squad also won four silvers and eight bronzes in the French capital, with 14 of their 26 medals coming in swimming events.

The swimmers secured eight golds, two silvers and four bronzes, including victory for 18-year-old Filip Nowacki in the men’s 200m breaststroke on Thursday.

They also won two golds, two silvers and three bronzes in diving and four golds and a bronze in artistic swimming.

They topped the medal table in swimming and artistic swimming and were fourth in the diving table.