According to a well-informed Spanish agent, Kylian Mbappé could have signed for Barça in 2017 but the club preferred Dembélé to him.
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Joan Monfort / AP / SIPA
A few minutes after Mbappé's masterclass at Camp Nou, Spanish agent Junior Minguella made crisp revelations about the Parisian number 7.
According to him, Barça refused to take Mbappé despite the player's agreement to prefer Ousmane Dembélé, in the summer of 2017, after the departure of Neymar.
His declassions have created a mini-earthquake on social networks, where Barça fans accuse him of lying outright.
He explains himself today for 20 Minutes.
Son of a famous Spanish agent who notably brought Maradona, Stoickhov, Rivaldo or Leo Messi to Barça, Junior Minguella took over from the father and tries each year to recruit the best players for the Blaugranas.
Tuesday evening, after Kylian Mbappé's masterclass at Camp Nou, he explained on
Cope
radio
how he had tried everything in the summer of 2017 to convince the Catalan leaders to sign Bondy's kid, in vain.
According to him, the player and his entourage had given their consent for a transfer to Catalonia if and only if Neymar left for PSG, but Barça would have preferred Ousmane Dembélé to him.
What did he not say there!
Since Tuesday night, he has been drowned under the outraged reactions of the Twittos, who accused him of shamelessly lying to push the Blaugrana club a little more.
Caught in the gear, he therefore decided to publish a screenshot of the discussions he had at the time about Mbappé with Javier Bordas, the vice president of the FCB until last June.
For
20 Minutes
, he agreed to go back over these statements in detail.
What did you explain Tuesday night on Cope radio about Mbappé and Barça?
I explained that in 2017 when Kylian was still in Monaco and decided to leave, he had several options on the table as you can imagine.
The main ones came from Real, Barça and PSG.
At that time, as you know, Monaco favored a departure abroad so as not to reinforce a direct competitor.
As at Real, there was already the Bale-Benzema-Ronaldo trio, it may not be the right place at that time to allow Mbappé's explosion.
And at Barça, Neymar had just left, so there was a great opening for the Barcelona leaders.
They discussed with the player and his family, they agreed to come if Neymar went to Paris.
So from there we tried to find an agreement with Vasilyev, the Monegasque president and we arrived at a deal for 130 million + 25 bonus.
Unfortunately Barcelona management and sporting directors thought at that time that Ousmane Dembélé's position and style of play stuck better with that of Barça than Mbappé, who played him on the right, in the same position as Messi.
So you stand by what you said on Tuesday night?
Yes, absolutely, I affirm it, Barça refused to sign Mbappé because he preferred Dembélé to him.
But did they still study the proposal?
Yes, yes, the vice president at the time, Javier Bordas, with whom I spoke on whatsapp and whose screenshot I put on Twitter, was pushing to choose Mbappé.
He explained that you absolutely could not miss the opportunity to do it when everything was together.
He said that in addition to achieving an incredible shot from a sporting point of view, signing Mbappé was also the guarantee of putting a big blow on the head of Real Madrid who had followed the player for a long time and who wanted it at all costs price.
Why didn't it happen then
?
During one of the many conversations we had with President Bartomeu, he explained to us that he could not go against what the sports directors wanted, who had set their sights on Dembélé.
Why did you finally publish the screenshot of your discussions with Javier Bordas?
I come from a family of agents who have always managed to bring the best players in the world to Barça, it started with Maradona and it ended with Messi.
So it was out of the question to let people soil my name and that of my father [Josep Minguella].
That's why I posted this, to prove that I wasn't telling lies.
What role exactly did you play in this affair?
I and my French contacts at the time had a lot of discussion both with Kylian's close entourage and with Monegasque leaders.
And as I told you, we were very close to an agreement with them.
I saw when I woke up this morning that I had tons of notifications from people telling me that I was a liar, that I had said anything on the radio.
But I can tell you that I come from an AS Monaco fam and with the player, who was only waiting for the green light from Barça to validate the operation.
Do you think they made a big mistake?
I am part of the second generation of Minguella who operate in football and in the same way that my dad brought Maradona, Stoichkov, Rivaldo or Messi to Barça, I thought for my part that the real crack of the future, the one who would score the next ten or fifteen years of the sport, it was Mbappé.
That's why I gave everything I had with Javier Bordas to make it happen and obviously it hurt me a lot to see that all this had been useless ...
You explain that in case of validation by Barça, the transfer was made. But yet the Mbappé clan had also more or less given its agreement to Real first, then to PSG then. So there was nothing certain, was there?
At the beginning, from what Mbappé's family told us at that time, he was really keen to come if Neymar left.
You quoted a sentence from one of the members of the Barcelona management who said "Alguno llegó a decir que contra quien había empatado Mbappé", but it is difficult to understand the meaning in French, can you explain it to us?
In Spain, in this specific case, this expression could be translated as "What has Mbappé done so far to be so expensive?"
".
The idea of this sentence was to minimize the performance and importance of the player.
And in the end, they asked for 105 million euros (+ 40 bonus) for Dembélé who didn't have much more experience ...
Exactly.
Suddenly they could have said the same thing about him, "what did Dembélé do to be worth that price?"
".
Especially since it didn't go well with him at the start, they put Coutinho behind and then Griezmann, which led them into the very complicated economic situation we know today.
And today, even more after Kylian's game on Tuesday night, can you imagine Real not giving it a go?
I believe that at the moment, whether for Barça but also for Real Madrid, it is very complicated to consider signing Mbappé.
And then if PSG manages to do Messi this summer - be careful, I'm not saying it's done or that Messi has already made his choice, eh (laughs) - it will be even more complicated to get Mbappé out of there.
Not sure he wants to leave if he is told that it is financially possible to form a trio with him, Neymar and Messi.
And that is an element that Mbappé and Messi will take into account when making decisions about their respective futures.
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