Newcastle United’s Antonio Barreca has barely featured since signing.
Newcastle United boss Rafael Benitez has told The Chronicle that it’s ‘complicated’ to get Antonio Barreca into his matchday squad right now.
The Magpies made headlines on deadline day in January by signing Miguel Almiron in a club-record deal, but they also managed to bring in Barreca.
Having quickly fallen out of favour at Monaco following a summer switch from Torino, Barreca was snapped up by Benitez in an attempt to solve Newcastle’s left back problems.
Once highly rated in Italy, Barreca has pace and attacking ability but just struggled to settle at Monaco, meaning Newcastle had a real chance to get him back on track and secure a permanent move for him in the future.
However, the 25-year-old has remarkably played just four minutes for Newcastle, coming on as a substitute against Spurs just days after signing, meaning he’s now gone more than two months without a game.
Barreca is already a forgotten man at Newcastle, and he took to Instagram last week to urge the club not to forget about him, before editing the caption to state that he is ready to play when needed – and it’s thought that the initial post was about the club’s training photos and not aimed at Benitez.
Now, Benitez has admitted that he didn’t know Barreca put up the Instagram post, but had been talking to him that same day or possibly the day after, reassuring the Italian that he has confidence in him.
However, Benitez noted that it’s ‘quite complicated’ to try and get Barreca on the bench, as Paul Dummett and Kenedy have greater versatility, meaning it’s unclear just when he will get another chance with the Magpies.
“To be fair, I didn’t know that he put something on Instagram. I was talking with him that day or the day after, when exactly I don’t know,” said Benitez. “I was talking with him because I had a conversation with another person in Italy, and then I was talking with him about that. I told him that I would like to give him a chance, but obviously the team was doing well. Dummett, who at the beginning was injured, was fine, so it’s not easy for him. I told him that I gave him confidence in the first game because I put him on to play some minutes against Tottenham, because I trust him; because we were losing, and I gave him an attacking role for the team.”
“After that, we were doing well and he has had no space. But you have to pick – and you have to understand that – when you have to pick the 18 players, it depends on the players you have available, and then you have to pick one or the other one. With [Sean] Longstaff, we had five midfielders, so you cannot go with five midfielders. Sometimes when you have players who can play in this position like Dummett and Kenedy, when he was there, you don’t need another player. And maybe he [Barreca] can only play in this position and you need players for the other positions [on the bench], so it’s quite complicated,” he added.
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