With the reductions and salary deferrals of Gerard Piqué and Sergio Busquets stuck, both the Camp Nou offices and the Ciutat Esportiva are clear that the solution “depends on the exits”. Memphis Depay’s farewell to the Italian Juventus will be resolved once Barça and the Dutch forward reach an agreement on the receipt of the contract year that remains on him as a Blaugrana. With his departure, however, it is still not enough to be able to enroll Jules Kounde. A situation that requires the transfer of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to Chelsea, which Barça is negotiating with the British team. At the Barcelona club, however, there are also doubts that just the sale of the Gabonese will be enough to register the Frenchman.
Only the departure of the two strikers would, of course, guarantee the desired registration of the former Sevilla defender. In any case, the operation that will help the most would be the transfer of the Gabonese attacker, who arrived in January of last month with a low profile to be able to be registered, but which increases noticeably this season as compensation and is placed in the upper part of the new salary scale stipulated since the arrival of Joan Laporta in the presidency. As reported The Athletic, Chelsea presented this Friday to Barça an offer for Aubameyang set at an amount close to 18 million euros plus Marcos Alonso, a left back who has already agreed on his arrival at the Barcelona club, but who, like Kounde, depends on power be registered The Blaugrana team is studying the proposal, although it has assessed the Gabonese at a higher transfer amount: more than 20 million euros.
Be that as it may, the profit will be positive even if Barça has to compensate part of the salary that Aubameyang was committed to this season. Nor will the commissions that will have to be met to streamline management ruin the green numbers. The economic arguments, as well as the promise of unleashing the remodeling of the defense, are those that have been used to convince Xavi Hernández, since unlike Memphis, it did count on the ex-Arsenal and Borussia Dortmund as a useful footballer to relieve Robert Lewandoswki. The departure of the Gabonese will mean putting an end to six months of profitable convenience between the striker, who has benefited Barça with goals and, in return, has returned to the first level after falling into ostracism for his disputes with Mikel Arteta, who took away the captaincy of the team gunner.
Farewell to the two top scorers
The rebuilding of Barça in Xavi’s first year from the start of the season to the season is such that it involves getting rid of the two top scorers from last season. Both Memphis and Aubamyenag (in their case in just half a year) scored 13 goals. But while the Gabonese could have stayed as Lewandoswki’s replacement, Barça already admitted at the end of last season that the Dutchman’s destiny would hardly be to continue at Barça. The former Olympique de Lyon player at the Camp Nou had a good arrival at the club, an orphan of joy after Leo Messi’s bitter farewell, and his start to the season was remarkably high. At the same time, the attacker took care of his social networks, leaving a sentence in Catalan and referring to much-loved festivities in Catalonia, such as Sant Jordi’s day. Even, the club saw in Memphis a vein to exploit commercially. But the Dutch striker, like the whole team in general, ended up running out of fangs. In his last stretch of the season, marked by injuries, he only counted as a resource for Xavi.
