This summer, "Barcelona" was determined to strengthen their team and aimed at several famous players. However, they failed to acquire the desired footballers for the Catalans, and at the beginning of August, the team received another blow - one of the club's leaders, Neymar, left the team. After this transfer, "Barca" took extremely active and even desperate actions trying to attract new players, and Goal.com journalist Ben Hayward revealed more about their "unethical" tricks this summer.
Such actions are one of the worst-kept secrets in football. Attempts to influence clubs by agreeing with players have been around as long as transfers themselves. Despite it being against the rules, such actions happen constantly. However, this summer, "Barcelona" took this practice to an extremely extreme level.
Almost all teams use this tactic of acquiring players, and the most famous example was recorded in 2005. At that time, Ashley Cole, still with "Arsenal", was caught in a secret meeting with "Chelsea" coach Jose Mourinho, the team's executive director Peter Kenyon, and his agent Jonathan Barnett. After an investigation, the defender was found to have violated the rules and had to pay a fine of 100,000 pounds to the Premier League.
However, such fines are very rare exceptions in the football world: almost all transfers are first discussed with the player's agent, making sure he wants to join the club interested in him, and contacts with the player's current team are established much later. "Barcelona" is one of the most prominent teams in this field, as in 2011 they paid Neymar's family 10 million euros to ensure that the player would join their team after two years.
Ironically, this summer "Barcelona" lost Neymar in a very similar way: an agreement between the French team and the player was reached, leaving the former striker's team in the cold. This provoked anger from the Catalans, but "Paris Saint-Germain" simply did exactly what "Barcelona" did with Marco Verratti and others in their transfer targets. Therefore, it is doubtful that the team, which fell in the Spanish Supercup against "Real," can have justified complaints about actions that they constantly include in their transfer policy.
At the beginning of this summer, "Barca" was convinced that they could convince M. Verratti to join their team. Especially since the player had previously admitted to admiring their team, it was no secret that the Italian was really tempted by the opportunity to move to Spain. However, the player was not willing to take drastic actions and did not want to threaten the "PSG" officials with a strike to force them to release him to the Spanish vice-champions. Soon after, the defender returned to the PSG team training and filmed a special video clip, expressing his joy at being able to play at the "Parc des Princes" stadium, thus ending all his conversations with the "Barcelona" team.
"Barca" also communicated with Theo Hernandez and Dani Cebellos, for the chance to acquire these players, but they chose the Madrid "Real" team, which also contacted these players. In both cases, the teams that these players left - Madrid's "Atletico" and "Real Betis" - were not warned about the future transfers of these footballers and only found out about them in the last moments.
The strategy used by the Catalans is similar to that adopted by their main competitors from Madrid under Florentino Perez: convince players to join the team by offering them huge sums of money and the opportunity to represent a famous club and tell them that they have to press their current teams to start negotiations for a future move. Modern football players have much more power, so as soon as a footballer decides that he wants to move to a more famous and financially capable team, he usually goes there.
However, T. Hernandez and D. Ceballos chose to play in Madrid, "Arsenal" defender Hector Ballerina, even if he wanted to return to Catalonia, did not dare demand the club to sell him, which only confirms that "Barca's" ability to convince players to join their team is no longer as compelling as it was in previous years. So ultimately, another option was chosen in the defense department, and "Blaugrana" will wear the "Benfica" team's shirts from this season onwards, where Nelson Semedo used to play.
Just like N. Semedo, the new team acquisition Paulinho was personally persuaded to leave the "Guangzhou Evergrande" team. The Brazilian informed the Chinese club that he wanted to leave the team, and they had no chance of keeping him in their ranks. "Barca" hoped that such a statement from the player would help reduce his release clause, but the Chinese team did not give in, and the full release clause amount provided in the contract was eventually paid.
Now the Catalan team has taken the same tactic in order to attract Neymar to replace him with Philippe Coutinho and Ousmane Dembele.
On July 11, P. Coutinho returned to training with the "Liverpool" team and gave an interview to the club's website expressing his anticipation for the new season with the "Reds." In Hong Kong and during training camp in Germany, the Brazilian behaved normally, had no problems, and remained completely professional, but then everything changed with "Barca."
In the Catalan press, one announcement after another appeared about the player's future transfer to "Barca," and information was leaked from the team itself about communication with this player. P. Coutinho was convinced that this was his only opportunity to join the "Barcelona" team, and if "Liverpool" did not agree to negotiate about the player's transfer, it would be up to the Brazilian himself to force the club to sell him. Finally, last week, the player was convinced to submit a request to be sold, when earlier this summer he had no thoughts of leaving the "Liverpool" club.
"The problem with this situation is 'Barcelona.' They told the player's representatives: 'Now or never. If you don't join our team now, we will never make an offer for you.' They put pressure on him, and that was Philippe's reaction," - Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard described the situation to BT Sport.
"This kid came from South America and always dreamed of playing for 'Barcelona.' Now he is panicking, thinking that if he doesn't do everything they ask of him, he will never have an opportunity to wear their shirts. I know this guy, I know he's not a bad person, and I also know that he really doesn't want to start a war to leave the team. But ultimately, we have to remember that he recently signed a five-year contract with a club that has always treated him amazingly and made him the player he is today," said S. Gerrard confidently.
The situation with O. Dembele is similar - the player missed team training last week without justification and tried to force the "Borussia" team to sell him to "Barca." However, the Catalans did not urge the player to take such actions, but just like P. Coutinho, he was warned to do everything possible to make this transfer happen.
"Ousmane Dembele didn't show up for the team training last Thursday without a valid reason, and the player undoubtedly did it intentionally. It's obvious that the team will penalize the player for such misconduct. After discussions with the coach, we suspended the player from participating in matches and team training until next week," publicly announced "Borussia" sports director Michael Zorc.
Although "Barca's" huge offers were rejected by both "Liverpool" and "Borussia" teams, they have now created a situation where both of their desired players publicly expressed a desire to leave their current clubs. Such actions can also affect the footballers - if one of them fails to achieve their goal and has to stay in their current team, restoring the trust of the current team's management and coaches will not be as easy as before.
Similarly to how the Madrid "Real" team used to do it, "Barcelona" also uses all media channels, along with footballers and their agents, to try to force "Liverpool" and "Borussia" teams to give in and eventually sell the desired players to the Catalans. However, as this summer has shown, this not only tarnishes the image of the "Barcelona" team, but also so far has provided almost no benefit: talk of transfers can only comfort the team's fans temporarily, and ultimately, all these measures may be futile and "Barca's" actions certainly do not guarantee that their pressured players will ultimately join the Catalan team.
