Great loves, sometimes, make immense turns and then return. For Ilkay Gundogan the journey was decidedly short. He said goodbye to Manchester City in July 2023, on a free transfer, to try the adventure at Barcelona, fulfilling a dream of his: after Germany and England, here is the Spanish La Liga, in a giant of world football.
A year ago Gundogan explained his decision like this. “It wasn’t a problem of duration. It took time for the talks to really intensify. If it had happened earlier the situation would have been different. I don’t want to go into details, but it was already an advanced stage of the season. And when it comes of Champions League quarter-finals or semi-finals, the players want to concentrate on football. I didn’t know what would happen next, I couldn’t plan anything. Manchester City was at a standstill for a long time, there was no movement from the club.”
It was a bad blow for Guardiola, that’s for sure. And it is precisely for this reason that, twelve months later, when there was the possibility of signing him again, with Barcelona letting him go for free, the German returned home, to the Etihad, Gundogan returned home: “When you leave this place like I did last year, you start to appreciate it even more. You realize what you had. You realize how fantastic that time was. You realize how great this club is: the best club in the world. Coming back after a year is an incredible feeling and I’m very happy, I feel privileged to share the dressing room with these extraordinary players again.” Ilkay Gundogan turns 34 today.