Guillem Balague says it won’t be easy for Barcelona to sign Ilkay Gundogan should the midfielder decide to leave Manchester City.
Gundogan has been a key player for City this season, both in terms of his performances and leadership as club captain.
The 32-year-old took his league goals tally to eight on Sunday by scoring a brace in City’s 3-0 win against Everton.
That result – coupled with Arsenal’s 3-0 defeat to Brighton – means City now only need to win one of their final three league matches to clinch the Premier League title.
Gundogan made huge contributions to City’s previous title victories, but he could be set to depart Pep Guardiola’s side in the summer.
With his contract set to expire at the end of the season, there is currently no agreement in place between player and club to extend his stay at the Etihad Stadium.
It has been widely reported that while Gundogan would like to stay at the club, City are offering a one-year contract rather than the two-year deal he wants.
What did Balague say?
Barcelona are reportedly willing to offer a two-year contract, but according to journalist Guillem Balague, the La Liga champions would have to perform some accounting gymnastics to make a move work.
Barca are still not over the financial troubles that have plagued them over the last few years, meaning that making signings is not straight forward.
If the club wants to sign Gundogan and bring Lionel Messi back to Camp Nou, then a few things would have to happen.
“Certainly they [Barca] are going to have to sell big players,” Balague said while appearing on ITV Sport’s coverage of Barca’s 4-2 win against Espanyol on Sunday.
“Raphina is for sale, Christensen is for sale, Ferran Torres is for sale, they would like Jordi Alba to go but he doesn’t want to.
“The plan is to put everything together to comply with Financial Fair Play but to have enough space for the likes of Messi to come in.
“For Messi to come in they would have to pay €25 million minimum [wages].
“It stills seem impossible right now for Barcelona to manage to get a third of the wage list down, plus a benefit of €250 million because that was a condition to use the levers to allow them to sign players last summer.”
Barcelona may be offering Gundogan what he wants, but it seems far from guaranteed that they would be able to follow through on their promise.
