Southampton will need to bring in a new left-back in the summer transfer window after Ryan Bertrand decided to leave St Mary’s as a free agent.
Barcelona’s Junior Firpo is identified as one of the candidates. On May 24th, we covered claims made by ESPN that the Premier League side have ‘asked about the situation’ of the 24-year-old.
The Dominican played second fiddle to Jordi Alba in the 2020/21 season and ended up making 18 appearances in all competitions, which included six starts.
Southampton’s effort to sign the fullback is detailed in today’s edition of Sport.
The player has a market in the Premier League, and Barca, who must close some exit operations before the end of this month, are ‘confident’ of closing some operations in the coming weeks. Their hope is to see Junior move to England.
Ralph Hasenhüttl’s side and the Catalan club have been ‘talking for days’ to ‘finalise’ the agreement for the defender’s transfer. It’s even explained the position of the two parties ‘would already be quite close’. 
The La Liga side are demanding €16m plus bonuses to sanction Junior’s sale and it’s the minimum figure needed for Barca in order to not ‘compute losses’.
Sport state there are clubs who are ready to meet this figure, if the former Real Betis man ‘gives the final OK’ for a transfer.
