As we already anticipated in AS, Xavi Hernández continues to have Erling Haaland as a priority when reinforcing FC Barcelon’s attackahead of the next season. However, in recent days this possibility has been cooling, especially due to the high economic demands of his environment: both his agent, Mino Raiola, and the player’s father, Alf Inge Haaland, They claim 100 million euros gross in commissions, 50 to be distributed to the neckline.
The president of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta, made it very clear to Xavi, in a meeting he held this week with the coach, that the current conditions for dealing with the signing of Haaland are totally unaffordable for the Catalan entity. Not so much because of the transfer price, about 75 million euros, nor because of the player’s file, around 17 million euros clean per season, but because of the very high signing commissions that his environment demands.
The Blaugrana leader explained to the coach that if these claims are not lowered by the player’s entourage it will be impossible to undertake this signingespecially considering that other clubs, such as the Manchester City and Real Madrid do seem willing to accept the millionaire amounts that the player’s agent and his agent ask for.
Nevertheless, Xavi asked Laporta for a little more timewaiting for a script twist by the Borussia Dortmund striker, who could end up prioritizing his sporting happiness and a project with a future, rather than literally bathe in gold.
In any case, Haaland’s future will be known before April 30, so Barcelona will still have time to undertake other important operations. In the event that the Norwegian international finally falls, the blaugrana club will do an ‘all in’ to bring Mohamed Salah. Liverpool’s Egyptian international, whose contract ends in a year and continues to delay the renewal, is the object of desire of Barcelona’s technical secretariat, as we anticipated exclusively in AS a fortnight ago. Xavi considers him the perfect piece to fit into the new Blaugrana attack, due to his versatility, overflow, goalscoring ability, speed, experience and pressure work.
The Salah operation also has the approval of the leadership by having a final amount much lower than that of Haaland: although the figures of the file would be very similar, about 17 million per season, the transfer and especially the commissions would be much lower, turning around about eighty or ninety million in total , almost a hundred less than the Norwegian.
What’s more, Salah does not have the total star component that Haaland dragsbut his role is that of a team striker, who sacrifices himself and works like the best, so he adapts to the needs of building a team thinking about the block and not just making the star of the day happy.
Under the same parameters would be the Polish Robert Lewandowski, the third in discord in the fight to reinforce the forward of FC Barcelona. Her age, 34 years old in August, would force the club to sign a short-term bond of two years plus an optional one. In any case, Xavi considers the Bayern player to be the perfect 9 to complete his attack, as long as the Haaland and Salah routes are frustrated.