Barça want to speed up the Dembélé and Coutinho transfers
The defeat against Madrid has cleared any doubts about the need for new signings
Barça will pay Dortmund and Liverpool around €100 million for Dembélé and Coutinho repectively
One in the morning in the Camp Nou boardroom and the faces are tense. Madrid have just won 3-1, and worse, they deserved the result. Bartomeu makes a decision, the pressure has got too much: Coutinho and Dembélé must be signed. The club will move speed up the signings of the midfielder and the forward in the next few hours. And they will pay what they have to. More than €100 million for each one. That’s what Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund are asking for.
Everything will be completed this week. Both Liverpool and Dortmund have accepted they are going to lose their players. But they want to make Barça pay a high price. They know that the club has €222 million in the bank from Neymar. Nevertheless, Barça will make final offers for the pair this week and the signings may be completed before the start of the league season next weekend.
PAULINHO WILL ARRIVE ON WEDNESDAY
The club will also sign Paulinho, a signing that has been done and dusted for days. The central midfielder, who will bring a bit of muscle to Barça’s midfield, is waiting in London until Barça give him the go-ahead to fly to Barcelona. He will probably arrive in Barcelona on Wednesday and be presented on Thursday, the day after the second leg of the Super Cup.
Whatever happens, if there was any doubt about the need for reinforcements before the game against Real Madrid, there aren’t now. And not just because of the result, but also because of Madrid’s superiority over the 90 minutes. As a result, the Coutinho and Dembélé sagas are now coming to an end. At a high price. But it is what it is…
