The central defender's previous agreement with the Basque club was up at the end of June, and he has now finalized a move to the Camp Nou on a two-year deal that will take him through the summer of 2025.
Martinez, who is 32 years old, was rumored to be moving to Barcelona in January, and the club has now announced that he will be joining them.
when rising through the ranks of Real Sociedad's development program, Martinez played for the senior team more than 200 times before moving on to Athletic Bilbao in 2018, when the latter club paid his €32 million release clause.
He ended up playing 177 times for the team, including 18 across all competitions in the most recent year.
Martinez has won 20 caps for Spain, the most recent of which was in March. However, Luis de la Fuente did not include Martinez in his squad for the European Qualification matches that took place last month.
In spite of Barcelona's failure to sign Lionel Messi this summer due to the player's decision to sign with Inter Miami instead, head coach Xavi was successful in signing Ilkay Gundogan away from Manchester City for free.
The plan for the champions' economic viability was authorized by La Liga last month, which gave the club the authority to register new contracts with Ronald Araujo and Gavi. Despite this, the club is still functioning with limited financial resources.
The club is still over their salary limit, and they are only allowed to spend forty percent of whatever they receive through sales and loans on new signings. This means that they have to find a way to cut costs elsewhere.
artinez is a very experienced and ball-playing Spanish international center back who is regarded as a'market opportunity' due to the fact that he was free to transfer from another team.
Also Read: Barcelona transfer the ideal move for world-class Ilkay Gundogan.
Xavi was the driving force behind the former Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao defender's signing with Barcelona a year ago. Xavi believed that the player met the technical and tactical requirements for Barca's possession-based style of play, along with the necessary level of physical power and tenacity for the squad.
The team decided to go in a different direction and sign Marcos Alonso instead, but the former Chelsea left back suffered mightily when he was moved to the center of the back four. As a result of Jordi Alba's departure, Alonso may now play in the position that is more natural for him, while Martinez will be one of the four center back alternatives alongside Andreas Christensen, Ronald Araujo, and Jules Kounde.
That is a difficult topic to answer, just like everything else that has to do with Barcelona's finances during the past few years.
Even though high-earning players like Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets, Alba, and Samuel Umtiti have since left the club and the Blaugrana board raised over €700,000,000 by pulling one-off financial 'levers' last summer, board members still had to give personal guarantees worth €6.7,000,000 prior to the end of the club's financial year last week.
In principle, Barcelona is able to acquire the financial resources to sign further players; nevertheless, the club must first convince La Liga that their intentions are "viable." The new contracts that have been agreed upon with Araujo, Gavi, Sergi Roberto, Alonso, and Inaki Pena are anticipated to be approved in the very near future.
Nevertheless, adding new players beyond that remains tough; hence, more players will need to go before Martinez (and Gundogan) can be registered. Martinez and Gundogan both have to be registered.
