Barcelona reveal club behind €250m Lamine Yamal bid

• Barcelona received €250m bid for Yamal during summer transfer window
• Club president declined to reveal identity of team behind offer
• Board member named the club in question

A Barcelona official has confirmed Paris Saint-Germain were the team behind the €250m bid for Lamine Yamal during the summer.

Reports of the offer emerged back in June, with PSG rumoured to be behind the bid, but club president Joan Laporta declined to name the team in question when he confirmed the proposal during an in-house media interview in October.

However, sports commission member Enric Masip, who operates as an adviser to Laporta, has now confirmed it was the French giants who tried to land Yamal’s signature.

“The president has already said that there was an offer worth €250m that was rejected and never even considered,” he told El Chiringuito. “It came from France.”

Pressed directly on whether it was PSG who were trying to sign Yamal as their replacement for Real Madrid-bound Kylian Mbappe, Masip added: “When you have the money to spend, you can aspire to try and sign whoever you want.”

Masip went on to admit that Yamal’s emergence came at the perfect time as Madrid’s acquisition of Mbappe threatened to swing the balance of power in Los Blancos’ favour.

“I would say that right now he’s the most decisive player [in the world], yes,” Masip continued. “I don’t think it’s necessarily good to speak about a 17-year-old kid being the best in the world, but for us, he is.

“I wouldn’t say we have won the lottery, but the year that Mbappe decides to go to Madrid, which was the cherry on top of the cake for a team that had won La Liga and the Champions League, you have a 16-year-old kid appear who wins the European Championship and becomes a global phenomenon in a very short time.

“Suddenly, you’re in a league that begins as the league of Mbappe and it becomes the league of [Yamal] with the way he appears and plays in such a fun way. He is a different player.

“What Vinicius Junior can do, Mbappe can do, players with speed, with that quality… what Lamine does is something you saw in [Lionel] Messi, something different.

“Every game he does something that leaves you with your mouth open. It’s a privilege for La Liga and Barca to have a player like that.”