Atlético Madrid’s Arda Turan made a quaint decision this week. Barcelona came calling for the Turkey captain and the midfielder decided his smartest next career move was to join and so sign off his own exclusion from football for six months, until January 2016.

The club are under a transfer ban for breaching rules on acquiring players under 18. This means anyone bought this summer cannot pull on the famous livery until next year. Yet Turan is not the only footballer who still cannot resist the lure of the European champions.

Aleix Vidal is another. In early June the Sevilla right-back joined Barça despite knowing his boots would be mothballed and it would be the New Year before he could start challenging Dani Alves for a first-team berth.

Vidal returned to the club he represented at junior level on a five-year deal at a cost of around £16m. Turan also signed on for five seasons, his price £24m. Except. Barcelona are in state of flux.

The embargo on the winter and summer windows is complicated further by the vacuum at the top of the club. The current presidential elections mean transfers are being conducted by a “managing committee.”

This body made the peculiar decision to insert a clause into Turan’s terms that allows the new president to sell the player back to Atlético by 20 July, 48 hours after the victorious candidate takes office.

“The managing committee approves the transfer of the player and FC Barcelona reserve the right of sale back to the Madrid club until 20 July this year,” was the statement offered when announcing his arrival this week. This was not the warmest of welcomes to Catalonia for Turan.

Given what he and Vidal have agreed it seems to deepen the sense each have made a short-sighted and self-defeating choice. Turan is 28 and so at his peak. Vidal is 25 and entering the footballer’s golden years. Yet both have surrendered a precious slice of the commodity most valuable to a footballer. The stuff that once gone is gone forever: playing time.

An elite player can hope for a decade as a real force at the top of the game. To wave away six months – half a season – as Turan and Vidal have done is surely a folly (as well as unprecedented).

Except is it? Look a little closer and this is an intriguing poser for debate. The answer to which may be a no-brainer. The question is whether half a season of prime career is a fair trade – even a bargain, maybe – for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform alongside Lionel Messi, Neymar, Luis Suárez, Andrés Iniesta, Ivan Rakitic, Alves, Gerard Piqué, Javier Mascherano and company. There is surely only one answer. It may, in fact, be harder to find the footballer who would, could – should – say no to this.

If they did, a retirement filled with regret and self-flagellation might await. They would be stalked by the constant question of why they had failed to seize the chance to join a side that last term redefined what being the world’s best club is.

As Turan said: “Once I heard of Barça’s interest, I couldn’t sleep until when the signing was made official. I was on holiday but I called my agent every day to ask if the deal was closed. I couldn’t get Barça out of my head. Having grown accustomed to suffering against players like Messi, Suárez, Neymar, Iniesta, now I have the honour of playing alongside them. Messi is the best in the world and Iniesta is my idol. Luis Enrique called me yesterday to welcome me. It was a great gesture, I’m very happy.”

The attraction of jumping on the great Barcelona carousel is irresistible. The imperious fashion with which Messi and company dispatched Juventus, 3-1, in May’s Champions League final established them once more as the continent’s superior force, a class apart from the rest of Europe’s aristocrats.

Barça’s fourth European Cup since 2006 completed a second treble since 2009, La Liga and the Copa del Rey having already been secured by Luis Enrique’s band of celestial performers. It made the club the first in Europe to achieve the feat of Champions League, domestic league and domestic cup twice.

The way they did so, how the 2014-15 Barça played formed the view that the treble vintage of Pep Guardiola may be “inferior” to that sent out by Enrique.

The dizzying pass-and-move and balletic touch remain but this has been enhanced by a muscular, direct quality that has raised this Barça to new heights.

So 2015 is a fine year for any footballer to join, even if they cannot strut their stuff until next year. In grabbing the opportunity Turan and Vidal have signalled each do not care about the byzantine politics of the club who now own them.

“I respect all the candidates. All I’m thinking about is that Barça are my dream and, if they want me and I want them, there’s nothing to talk about,” said Turan while Vidal added: “After the birth of my daughter this is the most important day of my life. I’m back at what used to be my home.”

He and Turan merely want to play for Barcelona – even if they have to wait six months to do so.