What’s Next For Barcelona? 6 Potential Neymar Replacements
By Tom Bogert
With an abundance of cash, who should Barcelona target to replace Neymar?
The transfer of Neymar to Paris St-Germain left a wake of losers.
Obviously, Barcelona seeing arguably their second best player, and heir to the throne shared by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo’s of world’s best, is suboptimal. It happening with less than a month before the transfer window closes doesn’t help. Nor that it was a public saga of which every team they’ll negotiate with will know they have an embarrassing amount of money to spend on a replacement.
Those teams that Barcelona will be negotiating with are at a loss because the Catalan club won’t sit quietly for the rest of the window. Before the Neymar transfer, there was a good chance that Barcelona wouldn’t be making a gargantuan transfer this summer. Now, clubs outside the very best in Europe are in grave danger of losing their best players because when the Spanish giants come calling, they don’t hear ‘no’ often.
The players who are targeted by Barcelona and want to switch but don’t, or are blocked, could be at a loss. Take Virgil Van Dijk: he’s still trying to push for a move to Liverpool from Southampton that may not come and he’s stuck training away from the first team.
Now, all eyes are on Barcelona and what they do. They’ll likely be stuck overpaying for a replacement but that’ll be the cost of business. They can essentially take their pick from just about anyone in the world.
Who should they go for?