Lille enters the race to sign 20-year-old Barcelona defender | OneFootball

Lille enters the race to sign 20-year-old Barcelona defender | OneFootball

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·20 August 2024

Lille enters the race to sign 20-year-old Barcelona defender

Article image:Lille enters the race to sign 20-year-old Barcelona defender

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images

FC Barcelona continue to work towards establishing a balance between a competitive squad and a reasonable financial situation. Finding the right balance will be tricky, and it has proven to be difficult to maintain, but that remains their aim. For Barcelona, however, this challenge has a lot of intricacies to manage.


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Primarily, without sales taking place no balance can actually be found. Fortunately for the Catalan giants, they still boast one of the most enviable rosters in world football and have some players who could facilitate some degree of financial benefits towards the club if they were to be sold.

Ideally, players like Ferran Torres could be sold off to Newcastle United, but the world is far from an ideal place. Instead, as highlighted by SPORT, Barcelona have received information that French side Lille is more than interested in taking away the services of young Senegalese defender Mikayil Faye this summer.

With Barcelona already prepared to sell the player with a buy-back clause, Lille’s interest is more than welcome. They now join fellow French side Rennes in being the two Ligue 1 suitors for the 20-year-old central defender who can also play as a left-back. Barcelona are currently demanding €15 million for the player, but both the interested clubs have slightly different offers on the table.

From the side of Rennes, there are reports suggesting that they are willing to pay close to €11 million for the player whereas Lille are willing to go to an amount slightly higher than that. However, the decision will ultimately be Faye’s to make depending on which destination seems like a better fit to him.

Believing that he has wasted the summer at Barça given that he was promised first team opportunities in the official season but that he has not been shown continuous faith by the club in that regard. Thus, he has now turned his attention towards going to a club where he can be guaranteed continuous chances.

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