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The arrival of Marco Asensio at Barça depends on Dembélé

MadridMateu Alemany doesn’t like speaking in the conditional at all. He, the most responsible for Barça’s football area, wants to talk about certainties and fait accompli, aware that in this sport things can change in the blink of an eye. Ask Chelsea, who seemed to have tied the signing of Jules Kounde but everything ended up falling apart when Barça called him to come to the Camp Nou. Now, it’s one thing to fly pigeons and the other is to consider different scenarios to be able to react depending on what happens. Marco Asensio is one such case.

Asensio’s name has been ringing for Barça for a few days now. The Mallorcan winger, 26 years old, ends his contract with Real Madrid. In Chamartín, Asensio has played a handful of minutes, although he hasn’t had the leading role he would like. It is now pending renewal. And, as in all negotiations, it is not the same to talk about a new contract when you go empty-handed than to do it if there is a club like Barça that is waiting for you.

Florentino Pérez, plenipotentiary president of Real Madrid, has already shown on repeated occasions that he does not accede to blackmail and that his pulse does not tremble when making decisions. But Marco Asensio, who also has almost nothing to lose, allows himself to be loved. In a recent interview with Cope, he left open the possibility of coming to Camp Nou, although he assured that there was no offer on the table. From the Blaugrana team, they maintain this thesis, but they also do not close the door to incorporating him next summer. What does it depend on? At the outset, it is clear that Asensio does not renew with Madrid. And then, the future of Ousmane Dembélé, a player who is in all the sauces, when talking about the signing market.

As ARA explained in the summer, Barça’s sports department is very seriously considering the possibility of selling Dembélé this season. In fact, there is even the option of selling it in the winter, once the World Cup is over. The French winger has a two-year contract and a clause of 100 million, relatively affordable for the main European clubs. In addition, his agent, Moussa Sissoko, continues to shuffle his tail to manage to move the player from the Camp Nou and thus collect a millionaire premium that Barça has denied him. Thus, if Dembélé finally leaves, Marco Asensio would be the great candidate to take his place. A round deal, in strictly economic terms: Barça would charge for the sale of Dembélé and incorporate a replacement at zero cost.

At the moment, however, no short-term moves are foreseen, even though Asensio recalled in an interview that on January 1 he was already free to sign with whoever he wanted. “It’s a position that we have very well covered, but come and find out what will happen a year from now,” they pointed out from the dressing room. The noble offices of the Camp Nou also deny any kind of pre-agreement, although their answer is not so categorical about what will happen in the future. In large part, for the economic reasons that would mean the Asensio-Dembélé change, since the entity continues to be short of money due to the wage bill.

It is no coincidence that Barça categorically denies any kind of agreement or pre-agreement with Asensio. FIFA regulations make it very clear that clubs cannot negotiate with footballers from other teams – without their authorization – until the players have less than six months left on their contracts. Many times this regulation is not followed. But in the case of Asensio, Barça knows that it has to wear silk gloves because it is dealing with a player who belongs to Real Madrid and that Florentino has bad fleas. Without going any further, the Blaugrana team already got their fingers stuck in Antoine Griezmann’s day (Atletico de Madrid), after the matassars obtained evidence according to which the Blaugrana team had been negotiating with the French attacker before time

The failed signing of Marco Asensio by Barça in 2015

If Marco Asensio finally lands at the Camp Nou, the Majorcan winger would have fulfilled the desire he had, when he was young, to sign for Barça. At the time he was playing for Mallorca, the club where he trained as a professional and had thrown a few foils at the club where Leo Messi played. In 2014, Barça received the first reports that spoke of that winger, who was then 18 years old. The two clubs even reached an agreement for the transfer, for 4.5 million euros. The problem was the payment formula. Barça, as they usually did, asked to pay in installments, but Mallorca demanded payment in cash. Antoni Rossich, at the time Barcelona’s general manager, considered that such a financial effort should not be made for a promising young woman. Thus, the negotiations were stuck, until Real Madrid entered the scene in 2015. Florentino also received reports about Asensio and learned that Barça were after the player. When he learned that it was enough to pay the 4.5 million in cash, he did not hesitate to present the offer to Mallorca. In parallel, he put a private plane on Asensio to travel to Madrid. Everyone knows how that story ended. It remains to be seen if he will take a plane again this summer.

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