Messi had asked Barcelona to reunite him with Neymar
Storied Catalan club couldn’t close deal with PSG to bring back Brazilian star
Lionel Messi says he wanted Neymar to return to Barcelona this year as the Brazilian would have helped the club take a leap forward, adding that his former teammate was looking forward to rejoining the La Liga champion.
Barca spent the bulk of the off-season negotiating with Paris St. Germain to bring Neymar back to the Camp Nou two years after he left for a world-record €222 million ($324 million), but the Catalans failed to strike a deal with the Ligue 1 champions.
“The truth is, I would have loved him to come back to us,” Barca captain Messi told Spanish newspaper Sport on Thursday.
“I understand some people were against it, and that’s normal, considering everything that happened and how he left us, but thinking about it on a sporting level, for me Neymar is one of the best players in the world. Obviously he would have increased our chances of getting the results that we all want. The club would have taken a leap forward, in terms of sponsors, our image, our growth, but in the end it didn’t happen.”
Barca president Josep Maria Bartomeu said last week that the club did everything possible to sign Neymar, but admitted it could not meet PSG’s asking price for the forward, who notched 105 goals in four previous seasons for the Catalans.
“I don’t know what happened with the directors. I know they were speaking with Neymar, he told me how things were going. He was really looking forward to coming back,” said Messi, who has been unable to play this season due to a calf injury.
“I understand it’s difficult to negotiate with PSG and with Neymar because he’s one of the best. These negotiations are never easy.”
Barca’s all-time top scorer also said he had no plans to quit the Catalans any time soon after it was confirmed by the club that his contract contains a clause that allows him to decide at the end of each season whether he wants to leave for free.
The clubs involved in this season’s Champions League and Europa League group stages invested more than half of their transfer spending in the last window on players aged 24 and under, a report by European soccer body UEFA said Thursday.
UEFA’s club competition report said the 80 clubs spent a combined $5.26 billion in the summer window, with 43 per cent of them breaking their own transfer records.
But instead of splurging on more experienced players, they spent a record 64 per cent of that money on players aged 24 or younger, and only seven per cent went on those over 28.
Defenders and forwards each made up 35 per cent of expenditure, midfielders 25 per cent and goalkeepers five per cent, it said.
But while spending was high, clubs were also busy selling players and transfer earnings totalled an estimated $5.44 billion.
Many clubs outside the main leagues, in countries such as Switzerland, Portugal and the Netherlands, now have a financial model based on buying young players, developing their talent and then selling them on to bigger clubs several years later.
UEFA said that six clubs managed net earnings of over €50 million in their summer transfer dealings.
The report also illustrated the disparity in spending power between clubs, when it said that clubs had spent anything between $360,000 and $1.39 billion in assembling their current squads.
Other stats showed that Portugal has nine of the 80 coaches involved, a large number given the country’s size and population. That’s followed by Spain with seven, Germany with six and Netherlands, Italy and France with five apiece. England has only two coaches involved.
Ajax Amsterdam was the most prolific scoring team with 3.5 goals per game in winning the Eredivisie, and Shakhtar Donetsk had the stingiest defence with just 0.34 goals conceded per game.
Around Europe, English Premier League champion Manchester City was the fourth-most dominant team in its own league last season with 2.58 points per game.
The mantle of the most dominant team of all, however, went to the mighty guns of HB Torshavn of the Faroe Islands league, who averaged 2.70 points per game with their domestic record of 24 wins, one draw and two losses last season. Former South American soccer boss Juan Angel Napout has been banned for life from the sport and fined one million Swiss francs ($1.32 million) by FIFA, more than one year after being given a nineyear jail sentence by a U.S. Court.
Napout was sentenced by a court in Brooklyn, N.Y., in August last year and also ordered to pay more than $4.3 million in financial penalties for crimes stemming from the corruption scandal that engulfed global soccer body FIFA in 2015.
He had been found guilty by a jury the previous December of racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. He had denied the charges.