Understandably, there was a lot of reaction from the Espanyol side to Garcia joining their bitter rivals. Fans were far from pleased, but defender Omar El Hilali has taken a more pragmatic approach in his response to the matter. Speaking to MD<\/a>, he gave his thoughts on his former teammate\u2019s move across the city.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to sound very typical, but everyone is free to choose what\u2019s best for them. I didn\u2019t expect him to go there. Mostly because other teams were in for him, Bar\u00e7a didn\u2019t make a move until the final three days. It became official very quickly. I know that I wouldn\u2019t go there, but everyone is free to do what they want. If he considered that going to Bar\u00e7a is the best thing for him, I\u2019m happy for him.\u201d<\/p>\n Originally, Barcelona had not planned to sign a new goalkeeper, with the idea being for Ter Stegen and Szczesny to be the first team options. But understandably, the club believed that Garcia was a market opportunity, which is easy to see given his performances for Espanyol last season.<\/p>\n Garcia has performed well for Barcelona during pre-season, but as things stand, he will not be able to feature for the Catalans during the upcoming 2025-26 campaign. He is one of six players that the club are hoping to register<\/a> before the end of the summer, and at this stage, he is priority number one to be done in time for the match against Mallorca in 10 days\u2019 time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The post “Didn’t expect him to go there” – Espanyol star reacts to Joan Garcia move to bitter rivals Barcelona<\/a> appeared first on Football Espa\u00f1a<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Earlier this summer, Barcelona completed the signing of goalkeeper Joan Garcia from city neighbours Espanyol. The 24-year-old, who has penned a six-year contract…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1805,"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions\/1805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/piquant-burotic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Omar-El-Hilali.jpg\")
Barcelona have high hopes for Garcia<\/h2>\n