Barcelona and Neymar need to move on from each other

Neymar reportedly wants back at Barcelona and the club are evaluating if such a return is possible.

The summer transfer window has yet to open and rumors of a Barcelona return for Neymar are already heating up. The latest rumor this time is that Barcelona are contemplating making a bid for the Brazilian and offering Ousmane Dembélé in the deal.

Diario Sport are reporting that those in the Neymar camp are optimistic about a potential deal happening and Neymar himself has told those in his circle that this is a possibility. However, Sport also concede that the relationship between Barcelona and PSG is not the best and is a very big obstacle in any sort of deal taking place.

For their part, Mundo Deportivo add that the locker room would welcome Neymar back with open arms. He still has plenty of friends in that dressing room including Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez.

While these are just rumors, that they keep popping two years after Neymar left gives all the evidence needed that the move to PSG helped no one. Neymar is nowhere closer to fulfilling his personal goals and Barcelona are a worse club without him. Be that as it may, a return to Barcelona for Neymar is a bad one and it would look even worse on the club to bring him back.

Neymar it the one that wanted to leave because he wanted to win a Ballon d’Or and not be in Messi’s shadow. PSG paid the buy-out clause and Barcelona went and splashed big cash on both Philippe Coutinho and Ousmane Dembélé. To include the latter in a swap would only serve to prove that the club have no little clue about what they are doing and seem to operate on short-term, rather than long-term, thinking.

Neymar is 28 years old and has arguably regressed since moving to PSG in both a sporting and professional level. He has not lived up to the hype since joining the French side and has not fulfilled the goal of winning a Champions League with a humiliating exit against Manchester United, after being up 2-0 from the first leg, being their latest blunder. He got into a confrontation with a fan after PSG lost the cup final to Rennes in which he appeared to punch the fan before making his way up the steps to collect his medal.

Barcelona need to stop living in the past and move forward. Their future post-Messi has to include Ousmane Dembélé. His two season at Barcelona have been up-and-down but he is still only 22 years old. To give up on him at such a young age would be foolish. The knock on him is that he cannot stay healthy but Neymar has missed large chunks of the last two seasons as well due to injury.

The obsession with winning the Champions League and the way their season ended, has clouded the judgment of those in charge of Barcelona if this is the route they choose to follow. Whatever their questions are heading into next year, Neymar is not the answer to any of them. Any sort of deal would likely mean a four or five-year commitment and for a squad who is already getting up there in age, bringing Neymar back would mean that Barcelona would find themselves back in the same situation with no one as back-up for any of the front three. At least right now, they have someone for the future in Dembélé.

The fact of the matter is that Barcelona need to improve in other areas of the pitch. They need adequate cover in positions where players aren’t as mobile as they used to be. That means selling players like Coutinho and Rakitic as well as giving others like a Nelson Semedo and Carles Aleña a chance to sink or swim. Bringing back Neymar all that baggage with him is not, and should not, be an option.