Messi983
Senior Member
I think this decision really depends on if the club sees Cucurella as a potential future starting LB. He's been one of my favourite La Masia players but I don't believe he'll ever be good enough to replace Alba and Barça seems to rate Miranda's upside higher as well.
If I'm wrong and they still believe he could be a longterm starter then loan/sell with buy-back to get regular playing time and signing a veteran backup while he develops makes sense. See how he'll progress and decide if he's good enough to return in a year or two. He should go to a better club than Eibar where he would play most of his minutes as a left-back and not LM/LW. Teams like Valencia or Sevilla would be ideal but they have established starters (and well, Valencia has probably produced the most quality LBs in Europe if not in the world over the last decade) so maybe a foreign club like Ajax or a BL team (it worked well for Carvajal in Leverkusen) could be a good choice.
If they don't think he can be a future starter then getting Cucu back to play 10-15 games/season for a year or two makes sense. He's cheap, knows the system and would give his best every time he would get a chance but unless he would really convince in his limited playing time we would then replace him with either Miranda or (more likely) buy a LB in 2021 who could be Alba's backup for a year or two before taking over as a starter. Obviously Cucu would need to accept this role and while he's young and wants to play as much as possible this is probably his only realistic chance to get a season or two in our first team so he could decide to stay. But if he believes it's better for his career to leave I think we'll try to make some money on him while try to negotiate a relatively low buy-back option to still have him "under control" for the next 2-3 seasons. By then he'll be 23-24 and we should be absolutely sure if he's good enough to have any kind of future at the club.
