There’s a good chance you’ve never heard the name before but on Wednesday night Marcus McGuane became the first Englishman to play for Barcelona in 29 years.
McGuane, 19, replaced Aleix Vidal for the final 13 minutes of Barca’s Catalan Super Cup victory over neighbours Espanyol, thus becoming the first male player from England to wear the blaugrana since Gary Lineker.
Of course, he isn’t the first English footballer to have turned out for Barca since 1989, with Toni Duggan having moved to the Camp Nou last summer.
Catalan channel TV3 call McGuane a “historic player — a youngster Barça poached from Arsenal, not the other way around!”
— Samuel Marsden (@samuelmarsden) March 7, 2018
After spending over 10 years working his way up through the Arsenal academy system, McGuane signed for Barcelona B back in January.
Since then the midfielder has made four appearances for the reserve side and now one for the full senior side, even if it was a Barca first team heavily embellished with second-string and ‘B’ team players for a match nobody outside Catalonia really cares about.
Still, Jasper Cillesen, Andre Gomes, Lucas Digne, Denis Suarez, Yerry Mina and Ousmane Dembele all enjoyed run-outs as Barca eventually triumphed on penalties.