Braithwaite: I am going to stay at Barca even more than four-and-a-half years

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“I am sure I am going to stay even more than four-and-a-half years that’s how I see it in my head. Right now, I just want to go and play and enjoy and win titles with this team because that’s what I am here to do,” he told ESPN.

Braithwaite joined Barça outside of the transfer window when the club were granted permission to make a signing due to Ousmane Dembele’s long-term injury. The Spanish champions paid his 18 million euro release clause to sign him from Leganes.

However, he only managed to play three games — Eibar, Real Madrid and Real Sociedad — before coronavirus saw football suspended.

“I am looking at all these legendary players that played here, and all the periods where they had some of the best teams, and for me one of the goals is to be able to say I played in one of the best Barca teams in a generation,” he added.

OBJECTIVES

He continued: “I want people to be able to look back at the team I played in and say ‘Yeah, that was one of the best teams there have been in Barca’s history.’ That’s a huge motivation for me and it comes with a lot of hard work, but I am willing to put in the work. I am just excited.”

However, before his Barça dream became a reality, he kept the club’s interest a secret — even from his wife.

“I just felt, you know, that I am going to wait and see how this goes,” he said. “If it’s gonna get 100 percent serious, then I will let [my wife] know, but there’s no reason to get people around me excited. I got excited, but I knew if I told people they were gonna be talking about it every day.

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“For me, I was at Leganes, I had to perform. When I am at a place, I give 100 percent, so I didn’t want to put my mind elsewhere.

“Usually I tell everything to my wife, but she only knew three days before I signed because it suddenly got leaked in the media. It got leaked in the morning and I didn’t see her until the evening, when I told her I had to talk to her. She knew why. She understood!”

LEGANES

As for his former club Leganes, he was grateful for their understanding: “I cannot speak highly enough of that club. It was really special for me and the way they treated me when I had to leave, sometimes when you leave a club, you can leave with mixed feelings, but they totally understood me.

“They said this is a chance, one chance in a lifetime, so you have to take it. They would have done the same. Of course they felt it was not fair they could not go out and get a replacement, which I understand, but at the end of the day they were really, really nice to me.”

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