Usman Muhammed has been placed on standby by Barcelona as his name was conspicuously missing from the list of 35 players summoned by the B team to resume for pre season training.
Usman who was ever present for the U23s of Nigeria at the Rio 2016 Olympics where they won bronze, is according to Catalan based Newspaper Sport among the incoming players not summoned by the coach.
Sport also pointed out that the B team of Barcelona, where Usman had trials and did well last season, are presently battling with a high number of players which will require trimming down before the start of next season.
A piece from the site reads:
“From last season, the players still involved with the B team are Varo, Martínez, Fali, Tarín, Sarsanedas, Marc Cardona, Alfaro, Abeledo, Moisés, Paik, Vilanova, Àlex Carbonell, Rafa Mujica, Dani Romera, Kaptoum and Nili.
Added to them will be the players coming up from Juvenil A: Carles Pérez, Dani Morer, Santi Bueno, Alasana, Josep Martínez, Abel Ruiz and Oriol Busquets (and two returning from loans: Jokin Ezkieta and Juan Cámara).
Ten more players will return later. Five of them are currently training with the first team (Ortolà, Aleñá, Cucurella, Vitinho and Palencia) and five more have longer vacations for various reasons and will return on July 24: Sergi Puig, Fati, Guillemenot, Lee and Quintillà.
Of the 35, there’s at least 10 too many and that’s without any more signings which will be made. It seems clear that Samu Araujo, Choco Lozano, Ruiz de Galarreta and Mariano Konyk, but there are others linked, too, such as Moha, Muhammed Usman and Miguel Olavide.
Therefore, the two men now in charge of the academy, José Mari Bakero and Guillermo Amor, have a lot of work ahead of them deciding what to do with such an excess of players.
Ade Emmanuel
