Gabriele Marcotti: Neymar move a transfer of power

Barcelona expect that by this time next week Paris St Germain will make an offer for Neymar, far and away the most gifted “second fiddle” in the sport. Barca have said he is not for sale, but there’s a catch: Neymar, like every Liga player, has a “buy-out” clause. Essentially it is the amount at which a player can “buy his freedom” and become a free agent. Originally intended as a legitimate way to comply with Spanish labour laws - after all, in the real world, we are generally free to quit our jobs and change employers - clubs quickly devised all sorts of stratagems to set it high enough to become meaningless (Lionel Messi’s clause - as per his new contract - is some £360 million, more than the total turnover of all but nine clubs in the world).

They thought they had done just that with Neymar’s clause too, fixing it at €222m (around £199m)… except PSG have made it clear they are willing to pay it. If they file the paperwork - and, crucially, Neymar agrees to move - that’s it, there is nothing Barca can do. He becomes a PSG player.

Why would Neymar swap the Camp Nou and La Liga for the Parc des Princes and Ligue 1?

The gut reaction is that it’s about money though that alone is only part of the answer. Last year, Neymar signed a new deal worth some £27m a season, PSG’s reported offer is £36m, including bonuses. A bump in salary, sure, but a more plausible financial explanation is that the boon to Neymar will come in commercial terms, with his monstrous social media following of nearly 60 million and endorsement-friendly outlook (certainly more so than Messi).

The more sympathetic explanation is that he simply wants out of Messi’s shadow and with the little Argentine locked up until 2021 (when Neymar will be 29) that won’t happen for some time if he stays at the Camp Nou. As the thinking goes, he can turn PSG into his team and do it in the prime of his career.

There is also the more cynical angle. That he has no intention of leaving but his father - who controls pretty much every angle of his career - thinks that if Messi gets a new deal then his son deserves one too. Never mind that his contract is only a year old. Barcelona were convinced this was the case at the start of last week. By Friday, they weren’t quite so confident that they could call his bluff and, in fact, enlisted team-mates to reach out to him to persuade him to come to his senses.

The economics of the deal boggle and not just because we would be more than doubling the world record. Buy-out clauses cannot be paid in instalments. Even for a club with uber-wealthy Qatari owners like PSG, this is going to be a stretch. In fact, if it does come to pass, don’t be surprised if they ultimately agree a fee and perhaps a player swap (like Marco Verratti, a Barca target who - maybe not coincidentally - has just switched allegiances to super agent Mino Raiola, who engineered the Romelu Lukaku and Paul Pogba deals, as well as the Gigi Donnarumma non-transfer) rather than going the buy-out route. Doing so could benefit both clubs. PSG could spread out the payments and Barcelona wouldn’t find themselves in a situation where they have to hunt for Neymar’s replacement with potential sellers knowing they are sitting on a mountain of cash.

Beyond that, the simple notion that somebody could march into an established super-club of Barca’s magnitude and force a deal for a prize asset would be a massive blow to the club and to the established order. Barcelona haven’t been on the receiving end of this since losing Luis Figo to Real Madrid. And, at a time when they have an under-fire president and an under-whelming transfer campaign, that’s not a good thing. As for PSG, statements of intent don’t come any louder.

WHATEVER happens, one of the remarkable elements to this story is how openly it has played out. PSG coach Unai Emery spoke freely about how his club were pursuing Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and Alexis Sanchez. Neymar may have been the box office target, but the other two offered their own sub-texts as well. Emery’s words came after Monaco had warned rivals not to put pressure on their young striker. Sanchez, who has a year left on his Arsenal contract, is a different tale, one which is complicated further by another massive conflict of interest. Arsene Wenger will ultimately decide the Chilean’s fate and he happens to have a lucrative side gig as a pundit for BeIn Sport, which happens to be run by Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who is also PSG’s chief executive.

So much for the notion of not speaking openly about other clubs’ players. Liverpool, of course, got in trouble for approaching Southampton’s Virgil van Dijk this summer. Their pursuit of Leipzig’s Naby Keita is well-documented, with the German clubs saying he “wasn’t for sale at any price”. Which is pretty much what Liverpool said on Friday after the shoe was on the other foot and Barcelona came knocking for Philippe Coutinho, a potential replacement for Neymar.

THE other obvious implication of a Neymar to PSG deal was mentioned freely by Barca president Josep Bartomeu, who said there was no way the French club could complete it without breaching Financial Fair Play.

PSG, of course, have been sanctioned for violating FFP before. Their current numbers look good, but only because of a £100m-plus sponsorship with the Qatar Tourism Authority, which raises all sorts of issues given both the QTA and the club are owned by the Qatari government. (Who, incidentally, is going through a rough patch following a blockade by its neighbours, led by Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, but that’s a different tale.)

Uefa have a new president, Aleksander Ceferin, and you wonder how the body will react to something like this, particularly if there’s an angry Barcelona demanding they throw the book at PSG.