Barça official: French team bid €250m for Yamal
Barcelona official Enric Masip has suggested Paris Saint-Germain were the club that bid €250 million ($263.9m) for teenage forward Lamine Yamal last summer.
Barça president Joan Laporta revealed in October the LaLiga leaders rejected the huge offer for the 17-year-old, but he did not confirm where the bid had come from.
“The president has already said that there was an offer worth €250m that was rejected and never even considered,” Masip, who forms part of the club’s sporting commission and advises Laporta, told El Chiringuito.
“It came from France.”
PSG lost forward Kylian Mbappé to Real Madrid last summer, which meant they were scouring the market for possible replacements for the France international.
Asked if PSG were the club in question and if Yamal would have been the perfect substitute for Mbappé, Masip added: “When you have the money to spend, you can aspire to try and sign whoever you want.”
Mbappé’s arrival in Spain was supposed to take Madrid to the next level, but the LaLiga and European champions’ attack has been eclipsed by Barça’s trio of Yamal, Raphinha and Robert Lewandowski so far this season.
Yamal has scored six goals and set up eight more in 16 appearances in all competitions, with Barça losing the only two league games he did not start.
“I would say that right now he’s the most decisive player [in the world], yes,” Masip said when quizzed on if Yamal is currently the best in the world.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily good to speak about a 17-year-old kid being the best in the world, but for us, he is.
“I wouldn’t say we have won the lottery, but the year that Mbappé decides to go to Madrid — which was the cherry on top of the cake for a team that had won LaLiga and the Champions League — you have a 16-year-old kid appear who wins the European Championship [with Spain] and becomes a global phenomenon in a very short time.
“Suddenly, you’re in a league that begins as the league of Mbappé and it becomes the league of [Yamal] with the way he appears and plays in such a fun way — he is a different player.
“What Vinícius Júnior can do, Mbappé can do, players with speed, with that quality … what Lamine does is something you saw in [Lionel] Messi, something different.
“Every game he does something that leaves you with your mouth open. It’s a privilege for LaLiga and Barça to have a player like that.”
Yamal missed Barça’s final game before the international break, a defeat at Real Sociedad, with a sprained ankle, which also forced him to miss Spain’s wins over Denmark and Switzerland this week.
He is in a race against time to be fit for Saturday’s visit to Celta Vigo, with Barça then in action against Brest in the Champions League on Nov. 26.
