Neymar to Barcelona: Transfer hinges on Barca talks as Real Madrid withdraw from race

1/45
Ben Hayward31 August 2019

Paris Saint-Germain sporting director Leonardo says Neymar's move to Barcelona could still go through ahead of the European transfer deadline on Monday.

A delegation of Barca directors travelled to Paris on Wednesday for negotiations with PSG and Javier Bordas said on arrival in the Catalan capital that an agreement was closer, although the outlook was more pessimistic on Friday amid reports that a deal was dead.

But Leonardo left the door open to a possible transfer, even at this late stage, saying the ball is in Barca's court.

"There has never been an agreement and there isn't one," he told reporters in Paris. "If a good offer comes in, he could go. But we haven't had one.

"Will there be any more negotiations? That depends on Barca. They have to make another offer. We haven't given any deadline, but the natural deadline is the close of the window on September 2."

Barca cannot afford a straight cash deal for their former forward and are trying to offer players in part exchange, but that is proving difficult as Ousmane Dembele and Ivan Rakitic are reluctant to leave the Catalan club.

"The first written offer we received from Barca was on August 27," Leonardo said. "We were open to speaking about players, but they did not accept our conditions."

And Leonardo denied that the French champions had spoken to Dembele. "We didn't have an agreement with Barca," he said. "So we haven't negotiated with Dembele."

Real Madrid have also been linked with a late move for Neymar, but Leonardo ruled out a transfer to Los Blancos for the 27-year-old forward.

"Barca did some important deals at the beginning of the window," he said. "But they are the sole candidates to sign Neymar."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in