FC Barcelona have won a scandalous $219 million (€200 million) offer from Paris Saint-Germain for their 16-year-old prodigy, Lamine Yamal, according to MARCA, citing anonymous sources.
Lamine graduated from La Masia’s academy in Barca’s first team when he was still 15 last season and broke several records for appearance and youngest goalscorer for club and country.
He’s pretty much a guaranteed starter under head coach Xavi Hernandez, and a regular foreign Angel for Spain who almost made it to the Euros in Germany this summer as part of Luis de los Angeles Fuente’s squad at La Roja.
However, PSG are making plans to play his final season in the Blaugrana colours, according to MARCA.
On Saturday morning, the Spanish newspaper published an explosive article revealing how the Ligue 1 giants are already for life after Kylian Mbappe.
To this end, the club from the French capital, supported through Qatar, is in a position to pay $219 million for Lamine.
Barca president Joan Laporta found out about PSG’s presence in Lamine this week when his agent, Jorge Mendes, travelled to Barcelona to meet with the Catalan leader.
Mendes explained to Laporta how willing PSG were to accept Lamine as Mbappe’s replacement when the Frenchman left this summer, as well as the monstrous amount of money they would be willing to contribute to make this happen.
Mbappe has told PSG he will not renew his contract when it expires on June 30, The Athletic reported last month, and the striker is expected to sign up for Barca’s fierce rivals Real Madrid in a flexible preview of the 2024/2025 season.
According to MARCA, Mbappe has already signed a five-year contract with Laporta’s counterpart Florentino Perez, something that has been disputed in France.
While MARCA claimed in its headline that Barca had rejected Lamine’s offer, the report also states that the club, with liquidity problems, is what they “will do with this proposal”.
However, according to Luis F. Rojo later in the report and on social media, it turns out that Barça will not settle for an offer that is not yet formal, despite their monetary difficulties and an amount of cash that, for many clubs, would be too smart to refuse.
In fact, along with other academy products, including Gavi and Pau Cubarsi, Lamine is considered the future of Barca in the years to come.
It is almost unlikely that these players with Barça’s coveted ‘DNA’ will be replaced; otherwise, significant sums would be charged to do so.
By rejecting the chance to make Lamine the most beloved teenager of all time after Mbappe joined PSG from Monaco in 2017, and the second-most beloved player of all time, Barca appear to have learned from the mistakes of the past.
In the same summer of the controversial year in which Mbappé changed sides for the last time, Barça could not prevent PSG from breaking the world record for moves by activating Neymar’s $243 million (€222 million) clause, in a move that also destroyed the mythical “MSN”. . trident with the Brazilian, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez.
Laporta’s predecessor, Josep Bartomeu, wasted money and more on replacements such as Ousmane Dembele, Philippe Coutinho and Antoine Griezmann, who failed to influence and have since evolved.
Amid the trio’s overpayments and extraordinary new contracts for existing team members, the pandemic hit and put Barca on the brink of bankruptcy in a financial situation they have yet to fully emerge from.