Earlier on Wednesday, we covered claims made in the Spanish press that Manchester United were told Barcelona will accept an offer of €75m plus €12m in bonuses for Frenkie de Jong.
The Red Devils have made an offer that includes €65m fixed fee plus an additional €20m more in potential bonus payments.
Xavi Hernández, down his end, is ready to let the midfielder leave if the club can bring in Manchester City star Bernardo Silva.
De Jong has been linked to Manchester United ever since the Premier League side announced Erik ten Hag would be their permanent manager from next season back in April.
Barcelona, meanwhile, have announced Franck Kessié’s arrival at the Camp Nou as he joins the La Liga side as a free agent.
The Ivory Coast international was presented to the media today and was joined by the club’s president, Joan Laporta, and sporting director, Mateu Alemany.
Laporta was specifically quizzed about Manchester United’s interest in the Netherlands international.
Responding to that, as quoted by Sport, he said: “He’s a Barça player and if we don’t have the need, we won’t sell him. We don’t want to sell him. We know he has offers, but right now we’re not selling this player.”
It looks like the Blaugrana chief is making sure not to publicly state De Jong is for sale and then weaken the club’s stance while negotiating his sale.
It’s, however, clear Barcelona will need to raise funds in order to shape up their squad next season.
“First we have to activate the second lever. It will not be easy, we are working on it. When we do it, we will have 1:1 in the ‘fair play’ and we will be able to attack the desired additions. The technical secretariat is working to satisfy the coach’s requests. I’m not going to say how many signings we will make, but we do promise to strengthen the squad,” the president added.
While Laporta made it clear club will need to raise funds [second economic lever] to bring in new faces to the Camp Nou, Alemany has talked about lowering Barca’s wage bill.
“Without talking about specific situations, it is very important to reduce and redirect the contracts that are out of the market. This situation affected 11-12 players when we arrived. Some, like Griezmann and Coutinho are no longer at the club,” Alemany explained.
“Little by little, we will solve everything. Our goal is to achieve a salary balance. From this situation that we achieve, we will have the capacity to go to the market with the same muscle as the other big European clubs.”
