PSG made a loan offer to FC Barcelona for former player Neymar as part of negotiations for Ousmane Dembele’s anticipated transfer to the Qatari-owned club, according to SPORT.
Dembele is expected to tell Barca that he intends to join PSG in the next few hours on Thursday.
The Ligue 1 champions will pay Barca €50 million ($55 million) for the player despite his release clause for that amount expiring at midnight on July 31.
Despite the fee required to release Dembele from the contract he extended last year until June 2024 doubling on August 1, however, PSG will only pay Barca the original €50 million of which the player and his agent Moussa Sissoko can double half.
This is because the Parisians informed Barca of their intention to buy ‘The Mosquito’ in a letter at the weekend which activated a ‘private’ clause as reported by Fabrizio Romano.
Yet according to SPORT, Barca were offered their former player Neymar on loan by PSG as part of negotiations centered around Dembele’s future.
Neymar and Dembele are inextricably linked by events that kicked off when PSG similarly triggered the Brazilian’s €222 million Barca release clause in 2017.
With some of the money received from the Qataris, then-president Josep Bartomeu bought Dembele for a fee of €105 million plus add-ons from Borussia Dortmund.
Xavi Hernandez reportedly cited Neymar’s plight as a cautionary tale when trying to convince Dembele not to switch allegiances on Barca’s recently concluded U.S. preseason tour.
Things haven’t gone to plan for the forward at the Parc des Princes in having fallen short of winning the Ballon d’Or or the Champions League, and he has tried and failed to return to Barca many times.
On the June evening Lionel Messi revealed he’d decided not to return to Barca, SPORT ran a report that Neymar had been offered to the Catalans.
Xavi quickly defused talk of a possible reunion by explaining that ‘Ney’ didn’t have a place in his sporting project.
And as explained by the Catalan newspaper, the Santos academy product was again rejected for similar reasons.
Though Neymar was reportedly willing to reduce his salary to make a move happen, Barca wouldn’t be able to afford to pay him either in their current financial predicament.
As things stand, the Dembele deal will be a straight cash-for-player operation with Xavi looking to compensate for his absence by deploying Raphinha and La Masia pearl Lamine Yamal in his right wing slot.
