"Bastard Bartomeu laundering his money in Brazil..."
Speaking of that. I remember when reading the Globo articles during the whole Gerson Saga a year ago Fluminense and Barcelona wanted to form a alliance or a "Partnership".
Fluminense, does have a pretty solid youth system and that's what the aim was for. in the last couple of years it had prospects like Gerson,Kenedy,Robert,Marlon coming through and even in the past it had guys like Thiago Silva and Marcelo coming through their youth system.
Since our Relations are really good it gives us the opportunity to get some of these prospects on loan with a low buy fee if they impress. the First one was Robert, who was considered a talented prospect but he had a pretty bad attitude and was considered "Lazy" by some supporters and as you can see he didn't work out here and was sent back.
Marlon was the second one and as you can see he's impressed a lot of people so far during Preseason and if he keeps it up he will stay here in Barcelona. it's an interesting Strategy since it's risk free and it helps us avoid pulling a Douglas/Henrique/Kerrison situation of paying money straight up for guys who are a huge unknown if they are good enough or are just overall Crap and we have repercussions later on.