Alejandro Balde won three La Liga titles before his 23rd birthday, and now he can’t get a start at Barcelona. With Jorge Mendes sounding out the Premier League before a January move, Tottenham are one of the clubs keeping an eye on the situation.
Barcelona would like close to €40m (£33m) for the left-back, but his agent thinks a loan with an option to buy is the more realistic deal, and that option could become an obligation if certain conditions are met. A decision is expected in December.
We looked at the state of that race in Barcelona’s €40m asking price and Mendes’ loan plan. This piece is about the player himself: what he does well, where he falls short, and whether he makes sense for Tottenham.
Who is Alejandro Balde?
Alejandro Balde is a 23-year-old Spain international left-back, born in Barcelona on 18 October 2003. He stands 1.77m, wears the number 3 shirt at the Camp Nou and is under contract until June 2028.
When he signed that deal in September 2023, Barcelona set his release clause at €1 billion. His market value is now listed at €40m, which happens to match what the club are asking for in January.
He has seven senior caps for Spain. The first came at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, after a late call-up when José Gayà hurt his ankle in training camp, and he came off the bench for Jordi Alba in the 7-0 win over Costa Rica. He played four times at that tournament.
Alejandro Balde youth career and background
Balde started out at Sant Gabriel and spent two years at Espanyol before joining Barcelona in 2011, aged eight. Through La Masia he always played a year above his age group, and won league titles at almost every level on his way up to Barça Atlètic.
His first-team debut came on 14 September 2021, off the bench for the injured Alba in a Champions League game against Bayern Munich. A year later Xavi handed him the left-back spot, and he kept it through a title-winning 2022/23 season. His first senior goal came in May 2023, in the 4-2 win at Espanyol that clinched the league.
Alejandro Balde style of play
Balde is a fast, explosive full-back who wants to get forward. At Barcelona his job was to overlap down the left, giving the winger on that side the room to drift inside, and his speed lets him carry the ball through the lines himself rather than just pass it on.
He isn’t a crosser who sits deep and waits. His game is about running at people, and his best season for end product, 2024/25, brought eight assists in 47 matches.
Strengths
Pace is the obvious one, both going forward and recovering when a move breaks down. He’s also comfortable dribbling in tight areas, which isn’t a given for a full-back, and he has big-game experience: he scored Barcelona’s fourth goal in the 5-2 win over Real Madrid in the 2025 Spanish Super Cup final.
The medals tell their own story. Three La Liga titles, a Copa del Rey and three Spanish Super Cups, all as a homegrown player.
Weaknesses
Fitness is the first worry. A hamstring injury against Athletic Club in January 2024 needed surgery and ended his season, and he has had three more hamstring or muscle problems since, two of them in 2025/26. Each kept him out for around a month.
The second is output. For all his running, he has only three goals in more than 170 games for the first team. And right now, form and favour have gone: he had not started a single match this season by early November, with 124 minutes spread across five appearances, and both João Cancelo and Xavi Espart are ahead of him in Hansi Flick’s plans.
Alejandro Balde stats
Here is how his Barcelona career has gone, season by season, in all competitions. Figures for 2026/27 are up to early November.
| Season | Apps | Goals | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022/23 | 44 | 1 | Took the left-back spot from Jordi Alba under Xavi |
| 2023/24 | 28 | 1 | Season ended by hamstring surgery in January |
| 2024/25 | 47 | 1 | Eight assists, 100th first-team game in December |
| 2025/26 | 42 | 0 | 31 starts despite two muscle injuries |
| 2026/27 | 5 | 0 | No starts, 124 minutes (early November) |
The drop is stark. A player who managed 42 appearances and 31 starts last season, even with two muscle injuries, has gone from regular to fringe in a matter of months.
Alejandro Balde potential and fit at Tottenham
Spurs do have options on the left, on paper. In practice, Destiny Udogie has struggled to stay fit and train for any length of time, as De Zerbi admitted after the Palace win, and leaning on an Andrew Robertson in the later years of his career is a stopgap rather than a plan.
Balde would give Roberto De Zerbi a younger option with experience at the very top. In our view, his willingness to get forward and carry the ball fits a side that wants its full-backs to be part of the attack, and at 23 he still has his best years ahead of him.
The format matters as much as the player. A loan with an option suits a club like Spurs far more than a €40m fee for someone who hasn’t started a game since the summer. It’s also what Balde’s camp want: the model is Ronald Araujo, whose value has risen during his loan at Liverpool, and Balde is after the same thing, regular football at a club that clearly wants him.
His wages are a sticking point, though. They have already put off Roma and Juventus, and Tottenham are not in the first group of clubs. Liverpool, Aston Villa and Manchester United have heard the terms of a deal, while for Spurs any move depends on players leaving in January. Full-back is on the agenda on the other side too, with Spurs looking at Villarreal’s USA right-back Alex Freeman.
Verdict: Balde is a gamble worth taking on loan
Strip out the last few months and this is a left-back with three league titles, a World Cup and 100-plus appearances for one of Europe’s biggest clubs, all before turning 23. That doesn’t disappear because he fell down Flick’s pecking order.
The risk is his hamstrings, not his ability. That’s exactly why a loan with an option is the right way for Tottenham to do it, if they do it at all. If Udogie gets a clean run of training, Spurs can walk away. If he doesn’t, Balde is the kind of player who could make the left side of N17 quick and dangerous.
