Barcelona star goalkeeper and captain Marc-Andre ter Stegen went down with a horrific right knee injury that has now been diagnosed as a patellar tendon rupture, which will cost the German international the remainder of the 2024/25 LaLiga season.
Although ter Stegen had become a target of criticism from Culers recently, he is the second-best goalkeeper in LaLiga and has been one of the best goalkeepers in European football for the past decade.
No matter how you spin it, the ter Stegen injury is a big loss for Barcelona, with the promising but unproven Inaki Pena stepping in as the starter. Barcelona could sign a player in the January transfer window if Pena proves inadequate, but even before that, Barca are eligible to sign a free agent on the open market.
Mundo Deportivo provided a list of 10 goalkeepers who could conceivably join Barcelona right now as free agents, and there are three players who stand out because of their LaLiga experience.
The most well-known and unlikely is Keylor Navas, who won three straight Champions League titles with Real Madrid and was one of the best keepers in the world with ridiculous reflexes.
He was eventually replaced by an even better and more consistent goalkeeper in Thibaut Courtois before taking the job at PSG, where he was eventually replaced by Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Navas reached a Champions League Final in Paris and was a genuinely good goalkeeper in Ligue 1. Most recently, the 37-year-old was a starter for Nottingham Forest before making his way back to PSG as a backup after his loan spell in England.
It’s not impossible for Navas to play for a rival, since he was kind of pushed out by Real Madrid for Courtois and won’t find any jobs remotely as good as one with the Blaugrana. But at his age and after his lack of success recently, Barcelona may prefer cheaper and more intriguing options.
Jordi Masip is another possibility. He actually came up from the Barcelona academy and made one start for the first team in the 2014/15 season before joining Real Valladolid, where he was a starter for seven straight seasons between the first and second divisions.
The 35-year-old goalkeeper saved 74.5 percent of the shots he faced in the 2022/23 season for Valladolid, which was his most recent campaign in the Spanish top flight.
Finally, former Elche goalkeeper Edgar Badia was one of the best in LaLiga during the 2022/23 season when he desperately tried to keep a beyond awful side afloat in the top flight.
Although Badia failed in that task, he earned many admirers with saves that rivaled Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Thibaut Courtois, preventing 8.5 more goals than the average goalkeeper would be expected to.
In fact, Badia has had four seasons with more than five goals expected prevented. Few football fans outside of the Spanish bubble know about Badia, but he could be a great veteran signing for free.
All three of these free agent options are far from ideal and have flaws, but as supplements to Inaki Pena in an emergency – and this ter Stegen injury is very much an emergency – Barcelona could do a whole lot worse.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. His work has been featured in ESPN, Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, NBC Sports, and other major outlets. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.