Manchester City have signed goalkeeper Claudio Bravo from Barcelona for 18m euros (\u00a315.4m).<\/p>\n
The fee for the 33-year-old Chile international could rise with \u00a31.7m of add-ons, say the Spanish club.<\/p>\n
Bravo, who has signed a four-year contract, is expected to start ahead of England goalkeeper Joe Hart and Argentine Willy Caballero.<\/p>\n
Barca have replaced Bravo with Netherlands international Jasper Cillessen, who joins from Ajax.<\/p>\n
Bravo said: “I’m very proud to be joining Manchester City.<\/p>\n
“I know the club is building something very special and I hope I can be part of many successes in the coming years.”<\/p>\n
Bravo joined Barcelona in 2014 and has won two La Liga titles, the Champions League and Fifa Club World Cup.<\/p>\n
“It is not easy to leave a club like Barcelona where I had two fantastic years, but the opportunity to work with Pep Guardiola was too good to refuse,” he added.<\/p>\n
Guardiola, who became City manager in the summer, said: “Claudio is a fantastic goalkeeper and an excellent addition to our squad.<\/p>\n
“He has experience and great leadership qualities and is in the prime of his life. He is a goalkeeper I have admired for a number of years and I’m really happy he is now a City player.”<\/p>\n
Guardiola has signed Bravo as he has major reservations about Hart’s ability to play as the kind of ‘sweeper-keeper’ his preferred system demands.<\/p>\n
Hart, 29, was dropped by Guardiola for the first three games of the season but was made captain for their Champions League play-off win against Steaua Bucharest, keeping a clean sheet in his first start of the season.<\/p>\n
It was expected Hart would leave the club before the transfer window closes on 31 August, but an immediate transfer is no longer certain.<\/p>\n
He does not want to move to Sevilla or Borussia Dortmund, both of whom are reported to be interested in signing him.<\/p>\n
Everton seemed a potential destination late last week but manager Ronald Koeman has said he has “no interest” in signing Hart.<\/p>\n
England manager Sam Allardyce has said Hart’s situation is “a concern” but that he would pick the player in his squad for the World Cup qualifier against Slovakia on 4 September.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC Sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manchester City have signed goalkeeper Claudio Bravo from Barcelona for 18m euros (\u00a315.4m). The fee for the 33-year-old Chile international could rise with \u00a31.7m of add-ons, say the Spanish club. Bravo, who has signed a four-year contract, is expected to start ahead of England goalkeeper Joe Hart and Argentine Willy Caballero. Barca have replaced Bravo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":242937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=242935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/242937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=242935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=242935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=242935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}