The 32-year-old is out-of-contract at the end of the season and is ready to bring down the curtain on his glittering career with Barca, who already have a replacement lined up in the shape of Borussia Monchengladbach’s Marc-Andre ter Stegen.
Monaco have been strongly linked to land Valdes, but the player is seemingly keeping his options open and with Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool all said to be monitoring his situation, a move to England is clearly a possibility.
“I’ve always identified with your football, the way the supporters live the game and the respect they show they players,” he told the Daily Mail.
“It is one of the biggest leagues in the world, with the best clubs in the world and, without doubt, it’s a very good option for me.”
Valdes will face Premier League opposition on Wednesday as Barcelona look to progress against Manchester City in the Champions League.
The Spanish giants hold a two-nil lead going into the second-leg, which Valdes and his team-mates are very comfortable with.
“Two-nil is a good result, but it is not definitive and even more so with the power that they (City) have,” he said.
But he admits that his friend and former Barca colleague Yaya Toure remains a worry.
“It was great to see Yaya again, he brought about seven pals on to the team bus and we were about two hours posing for photos. It was as if he was still in the team,” he said.
“Here, Yaya started as a holding midfielder and he had a way of playing that suited what Pep (Guardiola, Barca’s former coach) wanted from a central defender, so he played there, too.
“But his strength is carrying the ball forward and that ultimately means you have to be playing further forward. He protects the ball so well and now you are all discovering something that I already knew only too well: he has some shot on him. I learned about that in training a long time ago!”
One of Valdes’ secrets is that he studies videos of the opposition strikers, and he has done his homework on Sergio Aguero.
“He moves intelligently to get the wrong side of defenders and he gets his shot away very quickly,” Valdes continued.
“I watched Wayne Rooney before Champions League finals, Ronaldo before El Clasicos. I don’t like surprises; familiarity guards against that.
“You get in a one-on-one situation and you only have tenths of a second to decide, so it comes down to your intuition, but also the fact that you have analysed how the forward usually reacts comes into that.”
Written by Steve Milne
