Ansu Fati will not play until 2022

Barcelona have shown an important lack of goals in recent times. Ansu Fati got injured and the goals dried up. The La Liga side have badly missed him. 

The Barca academy player, one of the footballers the club are expecting big things of in the future, could not play against Benfica in possibly the club's biggest game of the year. He was also unavailable for the trips to Bayern Munich and Osasuna. 

After the failure in the Bavarian capital, they did not want to risk a player who had spent practically a year injured and who had suffered a relapse a couple of times after returning to action this season. 

Therefore, even though Barcelona have a lot to play for in La Liga after results so far this season, Ansu Fati, will not force his return until next year. 

He will miss the matches against Elche at the Camp Nou and versus Sevilla at the Sanchez-Pizjuan. The latter fixture was postponed due to the CONMEBOL triple header in the autumn. 

If nothing strange happens, the 19 year-old player will return for Barcelona for the trip to Mallorca and will do so after having scored four goals in eight appearances. Four of those have been starts and he has played 367 minutes, which means an average of almost one goal every 90 minutes. He will be Barca's first winter 'signing' and activity in the January window is expected.