Seemingly missing out on the signing of Aymeric Laporte from Athletic Bilbao, if the Basque press are to be believed, Barcelona are still searching for the enigmatic centre-back needed to bolster an ageing defence in Catalonia.
Long touted as a potential target for Luis Enrique, Everton’s John Stones to Barcelona has been so hot and cold we thought it might have just been a name thrown in articles as an alternative to real targets.
However, news on Friday morning emerged that Barcelona were actually rather keen on the English defender, to the extent his agent even travelled to meet the Spanish club last week.
Sport cover the story in their newspaper edition stating Paul Martin met with Barcelona executives to discuss the project offered by the Liga BBVA side, but walked away empty handed.
The Catalan newspaper state the offer presented by Barcelona was ‘light years’ away from what some Premier League clubs (Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City) were willing to offer his client, and that the Spanish club’s attempts to convince him with ‘sporting’ arguments (i.e. ‘We have Messi’) rather than financial ones fell on deaf ears.
Mr Martin immediately saw the move as ‘impossible’, and Luis Enrique will now have to look elsewhere for his centre-back.
With Stones out of the picture, Laporte close to Manchester City and Eric Bailly now at Manchester United, two options are left in Marquinhos and Samuel Umtiti.
Considering Nasser Al-Khelaifi’s reluctance to part with his Brazilian prodigy, Sport seem to resign themselves to Umtiti being the most likely purchase.
