Barcelona goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen is set to undergo a medical before completing a season-long loan move to Ajax.The Athletic reported on July 3 that Ajax and Barcelona had reached a verbal agreement over a deal for the 34-year-old, which would see him join the Dutch club on loan for the 2026-27 season.Ter Stegen is not in Hansi Flick’s plans and is earning a significant salary, which includes deferrals from previous seasons, and his contract runs until 2028.The German is set to undergo a medical in Amsterdam on Saturday before completing the transfer. He will not be involved in Barcelona’s pre-season friendly against Birmingham City today (July 31).Formerly Barcelona’s captain, Ter Stegen spent the second half of the 2025-26 season on loan at Girona, but made just two appearances before suffering a hamstring injury. He was subsequently omitted from Germany’s World Cup squad, with Manuel Neuer instead coming out of retirement as their No 1 in the run to the last-32 stage.Ter Stegen has made 423 appearances for Barcelona since joining from Borussia Monchengladbach in 2014. However, he appeared just once for the Catalan club last season, in the Copa del Rey fixture against Guadalajara, and has suffered repeated injuries in recent years.A “complete rupture in the patella tendon” saw him sidelined for over seven months before he returned to the Barcelona team in May 2025. In the summer that followed, he sustained a back injury which required surgery. That injury went on to be the centre of a dispute which saw Ter Stegen temporarily stripped of his captaincy.Joan Garcia has been Barcelona’s first-choice goalkeeper since joining from Espanyol last summer, and Wojciech Szczesny signed a two-year contract extension in July 2025 after he returned to the club to cover for Ter Stegen’s injury in September 2024, two months after announcing his retirement from football.‘Loan move the best outcome for all involved’Analysis by Barcelona correspondent Pol BallusThe Ter Stegen move on a one-season loan seemed like a pretty standard one given his status in Flick’s team, but it has dragged on for almost a month basically for tax reasons.Sources with knowledge of the situation say it’s been way more complicated than predicted, given the legal framework in Spain and the Netherlands. Those within Barcelona mention the distribution of the additional charges produced by paying taxes in two different countries, while those close to the player’s camp say that it’s taken time because they wanted to do things well in a context that was more complicated than initially envisaged.It all has led to Ter Stegen staying longer than expected at Barca’s preseason. He was even involved in the first preseason friendly, a behind-closed-doors game against third-tier club CE Europa that Barca won 4-1. Last Monday, he travelled with the rest of the team to the United Kingdom, where he has trained until he was given the green light to go to Amsterdam.Ter Stegen’s move to Ajax has been complicated by tax implications (Bruno Penas – Quality Sport Images/)Barcelona sources also say they will still pay the vast majority of Ter Stegen’s salary, which was always going to be the case. The Germany international signed his contract extension back in 2023, and included deferrals with a higher salary in the last years of the deal, which runs up until 2028.The Catalans are expected to pay around 90 per cent of his wages, a figure that could drop slightly depending on Ter Stegen’s involvement and achievements at Ajax.But it still feels like the best outcome for all sides involved. Barcelona offload a player they don’t count on, who does not have a clear space in Flick’s squad and save some money from their wage bill.For Ter Stegen, he lands in a big club to become their number one in goal, under a manager, Michel, that has always pushed to work with him. Formerly at Girona, it was Michel who pushed and convinced Ter Stegen to join the fellow Catalan club on loan last January too.