Can a club, even Barcelona, really spend €8.5 million on a teenager and send him straight to the second team without hesitation? Apparently so. That is what is about to happen with Jesse Bisiwu: the 18-year-old Brugge prospect who has shown enough on the wing to catch the eye of Barcelona’s scouts. For a club accustomed to the precocity of Yamal or the early arrival of Neymar, moves of this kind are hardly surprising. Yet Bisiwu’s case is different. He has shown obvious potential, but unlike those names he has never even made his first-team debut. That is what makes the operation so unusual. Barcelona’s philosophy is clear: develop its own young players while continuing to find others around the world to add to an already exceptional group. Bisiwu belongs to that idea of football. “A rough diamond,” El Mundo Deportivo called him, while also highlighting the risks attached to the move.
Scouts believe the Belgian has the qualities to eventually become an important figure on the right side of Hansi Flick’s Barça. The deal is approaching its final stages, and the fact that a player’s value can rise simply by wearing the Blaugrana shirt has only strengthened the club’s belief in the move. Bisiwu, however, remains a leap of faith. Given his potential, he had already informed Brugge that he did not intend to renew his contract. That choice also affected his opportunities on the pitch: not only has he never appeared for the senior team, but his involvement was gradually reduced even in the Youth League. Barcelona’s scouts are therefore working from a narrow window of observation: friendly matches, training sessions and lower-level competition such as the Belgian youth league. The work ahead will be considerable.
Bisiwu has been compared by some observers to dribblers such as Ousmane Dembélé, although any technical parallel remains premature. The task now belongs to La Masia: shaping the player within the Barça environment and finding him a role, first of all, with the Atlètic side — competing in Spain’s fourth tier. A period of adaptation before a leap that would otherwise be too abrupt. His main weakness at the moment is said to be his finishing. Before he reaches Flick’s first team, that part of his game will need to improve. But when Barcelona decide a young player is worth pursuing, history suggests they are often seeing something others have missed. Especially at this age.