FC Barcelona believes that one of its star defenders might listen to offers to leave the club this summer, according to Mundo Deportivo.
On Wednesday, SPORT reported that Bayern Munich believes Barca will be tempted to sell Ronald Araujo for the right price, with an offer of around $108 million (€100 million) for the Uruguayan.
The 24-year-old is reported as being happy in Catalonia, and Barca wants to offer him a renewal to extend his contract beyond mid-2026 in the coming weeks.
To tempt him into leaving the club he has been at since 2018, the Bavarians reportedly plan to present Araujo with a proposal worth double what the cash-strapped Blaugrana currently pays him.
Over at Mundo Deportivo, though, SPORT‘s rival publication explains that Barca have no intention of offloading Araujo, seeing him and 17-year-old La Masia graduate Pau Cubarsi as the future of the club’s central defense moving forward under a new coach when Xavi Hernandez steps down on June 30.
Still this doesn’t mean that sales won’t be made elsewhere along the back line and on a general scale.
Barca’s economic woes and need to balance Financial Play is well-documented, and many of their players have a “market” in the Premier League and beyond
One of those that does is Jules Kounde, who Barca bought from Sevilla for a fee reported as $59.3 million (€55 million) in 2022.
The Frenchman has struggled for regularity in his preferred center back position, and played almost the full duration of Barca’s 2022/2023 La Liga title-winning charge at right back where Dider Deschamps also fielded him for the World Cup final in Qatar against Lionel Messi’s Argentina.
With the rise of Cubarsi and further competition from Araujo, Andreas Christensen and Inigo Martinez, Kounde looks destined to fight for a place out wide where he finds another academy product in Hector Fort and Xavi’s current established first choice Joao Cancelo already vying for minutes.
These circumstances could persuade Kounde to listen to proposals from elsewhere, with Chelsea already close to landing him once ahead of Barca swooping in thanks to the pulling of the famous ‘economic levers’.