Alba tempted by move to 'special' EPL after ending 11-years run at Barcelona

Sitting down to interview Jordi Alba last week, as he finally cleared out his locker at Barcelona’s training ground after 11 years, offered up the opportunity to break some news to him.

Lionel Messi had just told Barcelona he was not going back and was instead moving to the US. The words ‘Inter Miami’ bring surprise and send Alba reaching for his mobile phone.

‘There’s nothing yet’, he says, as he’s told by one of his media team that although the story is all over social media, there is still no official confirmation.

Alba no doubt received word from Messi shortly afterwards. The pair have spent the best part of the last decade exchanging messages, and perfect passes. The MLS club is now favourite to sign him although there is also interest from Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid.

Messi in his time at Barcelona never had a better assist provider, the two were on the same football wavelength and most of the 18 trophies the 34-year-old defender won were with Messi alongside him.

The one thing Alba is convinced about is that his career at the very highest level is most definitely not over.

And, serving as a timely confirmation of that, he will captain Spain on Thursday night in their Nations League semi-final against Italy.

‘I’m excited to still be in the national team and I want to stay in it for as long as the coach thinks it’s the right thing,’ he says. ‘As for a club, now I have to look for the best offer.’

Will there be a call from England too?

‘I never have thought about anything beyond La Liga before because I was always so focused on Barcelona,’ he says.

‘But of course you see the Premier League, the atmosphere there. I talk to a lot of people from the national team who played in both leagues [Spanish and English] and they say that it’s special and I always had that idea that one day maybe … but I don’t know.’

Alba became second choice to 19-year-old Alejandro Balde at Barcelona last season but that decision was not an entirely football one.

With salary and back-dated earnings from the time when senior players froze wages through the pandemic Barcelona were due to pay him around 36m euros in his final year.

They could not afford it and it’s why they fast-tracked his teenage deputy making sure Alba got the message that he would play less and less the longer he stayed.

A tearful president Joan Laporta thanked Alba at his farewell media appearance two weeks ago because he had waived a sizeable portion of the money owed as he left one year short of fulfilling his contract.

Aston Villa might have been an option for Alba had they not bought another left wing back from Spain last January in Alex Moreno. Alba was moved to left back from left winger under now-Villa coach Unai Emery when they were at Valencia together.

His form there won him the move to Barcelona in 2012 where he became, in the words of team-mate Sergi Busquets, the ‘club’s greatest ever left back’.

He wasn’t always appreciated, especially when a campaign set out to make him and other top-earning senior players the bad guy in Barcelona’s financial horror story.

‘When you go you get valued more; it happens to everyone,’ he says of the outpouring of gratitude since he quit.

And on the subject of being scapegoated he adds: ‘I got paid what I got paid but I was always a cost-efficient player. The problem wasn’t me, or [Gerard] Pique, or Busquets. When the club needed me, when they have asked for anything from me, I was there for them.’

He’s been a fine servant for Spain too and as he leads them out on Thursday in the Netherlands against Italy memories of his finest hour for his country will come flooding back.

He scored the second in a 4-0 win over Italy as Spain destroyed their rivals to win Euro 2012 – Alba scurrying into centre-forward territory (and finishing like one) from a Xavi pass.

‘We saw at the last Euros, that they play a style of football that’s very similar to ours now and unfortunately they beat us on penalties in that tournament,’ he says. ‘They are rebuilding, but Italy is Italy.’

The Netherlands or Croatia will be waiting in the final if Spain make it and then Alba can go on holiday with his family and pick his next club. ‘Wherever I go, we’ll be fine,’ he says.

That’s certainly the way it has gone so far for the player Barcelona rejected when he was just 16 because they believed he was too small.

‘I always knew it would be difficult to play for Barcelona’s first team,’ he says remembering that early setback.

‘But I told my parents I was sure I would make it to play in the first division one day, maybe not play 11 years at Barcelona and for the Spain team, but I was sure I would make it.’

He made it as Messi’s perfect wing man and it may well be a relationship that is not over yet.