Barcelona chief hints at Suarez negotiations

With officials from Camp Nou set to meet with the Merseyside outfit on Wednesday, the La Liga outfit have refused to rule out a move for the Uruguay striker


Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu has hinted the Catalan outfit are in discussions with Liverpool over the signing of Luis Suarez.

Goal understands officials from the Camp Nou outfit are meeting with Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre on Wednesday to discuss the possible transfer of Suarez.

Liverpool will hold out for the release clause of between €75 million & €100m before agreeing to sell the Uruguay striker, despite his four-month ban for biting meaning he will miss the opening two months of the season.

And while Bartomeu confirmed that Barcelona are in the process of reinforcing the first team, he refused to specifically name Suarez as a target.

“I did say that this year we are going to be restructuring the team in depth and we’re working on that,” he said at a press conference.

“We’ve been working on that since February. But I can’t reveal things we’re doing. It’s a textbook situation we have to be discreet on these things, we cannot give clues to other teams.

“I will say that we do have a lot of negotiations at an advanced stage, but people are at the World Cup so negotiations aren’t all as far as we would like.

“But people are going to speculate about players that are at the World Cup and who we could sign but there’s an awful lot of factors.

“Suarez is not a Barca player he’s a Liverpool player so I can’t speak about him. I can speak about what he did, to come out and apologise it is honourable.”

Having missed out on La Liga, the Champions League and Copa del Rey last season, Bartomeu conceded Barcelona underachieved under Gerardo Martino.

But Bartomeu is confident that Barcelona’s reshaping of the first-team squad, including new head coach Luis Enrique, will help bring about an upturn in fortunes.

“We want to be able to once again win every competition we take part in,” he added. “Bringing Luis Enrique on board is an example of what we want to do.

“We’re bringing in players who are part of our philosophy but also bring something new to the club.

“Let’s not forget we have Neymar, [Lionel] Messi, [Andres] Iniesta, we have the best players in the world here. They’re all here, we’re a unique team and are privileged to have them with us.”

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