Barcelona were close to signing ex-PSG star in 2017, says agent: “PSG locked him in a room”

Marco Verratti’s former agent, Donato Di Campli has claimed that Barcelona wanted to sign the former Paris Saint-Germain midfielder in 2017 and while he agreed to move, PSG intervened and influenced him to such an extent that he agreed to even renew his deal.

Di Campli adds that PSG’s reasoning for convincing Verratti was solely based on Neymar. When the midfielder conveyed his message to the PSG board, the Ligue 1 champions ‘locked him in a room’ and promised that he would play alongside Neymar in Paris.

Apart from that, they also told him that they would renew his contract with the terms of his liking and this is where he made his decision. While describing the entire situation, Di Campli said that his former client ‘is a player without personality’.

What happened in 2017?

It must be noted that Verratti signed a three-year extension with the team from the French capital in 2016 and only a year later, they announced the arrival of Neymar from Barcelona for a whopping €222 million.

The two went on to play together for six years, but the story could have been extremely different had the player decided to move to Barcelona instead. While speaking about the incident, that happened over six years ago, Di Campli said,

“In 2017, Barcelona wanted Verratti, and the player agreed and told me that, but Nasser Al-Khelaifi intervened and turned the situation around,” the football agent was relayed by FCB World.  

“Paris locked him in a room and told him that they would take Neymar from Barcelona and that they would renew his contract and fulfil all his requests, and from here everything changed. Marco is a player without personality and could have made his career better,” he added. 

The money Barcelona received from Neymar’s move was largely invested in the likes of Philippe Coutinho as well as Ousmane Dembele. 

On the other hand, however, as they failed to acquire Verratti that year, a certain Paulinho was signed from Guangzhou Evergrande, a move that did not materialize for anyone.