Matheus Fernandes to sue Barcelona over terminated contract
By Tom Gott
Former Barcelona midfielder Matheus Fernandes is ready to sue the club after they terminated his contract last week.
Barcelona are on a mission to make drastic cuts to their wage budget to allow them to re-sign Lionel Messi, and one of the first casualties was Matheus, who had his contract ripped up less than 12 months after joining the club.
The club have argued that they were entitled to terminate Matheus' contract if they believed he was not performing at a high-enough level. RAC1 note Barcelona pointed to his poor form during the season, his lack of minutes compared to other midfielders and his performances in training, in which he was below average in six of nine important categories.
Barcelona dumped all that on Matheus in an email telling him that the remaining four years of his contract had been torn up. Charming.
However, the saga isn't over yet as Cadena SER state that the 23-year-old is ready to dispute his departure and will take Barcelona to court over what he sees as an unfair dismissal.
Matheus, who played just 17 minutes for Barcelona, is expected to argue that he was never given a fair chance to show his worth to the club, claiming that he was set up to fail by those in charge at Camp Nou.
That stance reflects a recent interview Matheus gave with Mundo Deportivo, in which he flat-out accused manager Ronald Koeman of having a personal problem with him.
Matheus confessed: "One day I went to Koeman's office and said: 'Why haven't I had played more? Did I play bad?'. He told me: 'No, you played well, but I can't put you on because I don't count on you, you don't have the quality to play for Barça'.
"I told him that if he doesn't put me on, he can't see if I don't have the quality. If the club signed me, it was because of my quality. There must be something else. I always thought it was a personal thing because he didn't talk to me, he did what he did. For me, it's personal.
"It's been a bit difficult for me because I came with the expectation to play, to grow as a footballer and as a person, but a strange thing happened to me, which is not playing, not having opportunities and always being out.
"I was training in positions that were not mine, playing as a right-back or in defence. In some training, I was not even included.
"There were days that I did not train. I stayed out doing finishing, shots on goal. I just warmed up, did some finishing, but I was not with the whole group. The days before the games, which were more tactical, I hardly trained with the group."