Barcelona president optimistic about mainstay defender’s continuity at club

Ahead of the summer transfer window, Barcelona’s main objective would be to offload players to raise money. The club would be hoping to resolve a large chunk of their financial issues this summer, and return to the 1:1 spending rule in La Liga.

However, as it stands, it is unclear which players are on the exit ramp for Barça. There have been reports of Frenkie de Jong, Ronald Araujo, Pedri, Jules Kounde, Andreas Christensen, and others leaving, but it seems the club want to retain their ‘spine’.

Speaking to Mundo Deportivo about the players who are expected to leave, Barcelona president Joan Laporta said:

“Players who do not want to continue because they do not play enough, or because maybe they are interested in leaving because others can make them an offer we cannot.”

Araujo expected to stay

Laporta did make clear, though, that fan-favourite centre-back Ronald Araujo is not among the players who are expected to leave in the summer.

“Araujo is very complete. What happens is that sometimes communication does go where it has to. I am referring to negotiations. And there, I think this has been solved already because there was some distortion when it came to communicating everything we had in mind for Ronald.”

In short, Laporta is optimistic about Araujo’s continuity despite Bayern Munich’s strong interest in the player, which was, of course, the topic of conversation during the interview.

“Well, Bayern are what they are. Here we always say, Barça is bad, Barça is good, but Barça is fine and much better than we were.”

“We are in the process of economic recovery and if some of the operations that we are doing end I think that soon we will have good news, we will be there again. With an economically sound and viable club,” he added, to suggest that the club does not, in fact, need to sell players.