FC Barcelona See Salah As Transfer Alternative To Haaland

FC Barcelona will target Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah as an alternative option if they can’t land Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund, according to reports.

The Norwegian is Barca’s top target, with As reporting on Friday that Barca first team coach Xavi Hernandez sees the Norwegian as a “priority objective in his project” at Camp Nou and “plans to insist on the need to sign him” during an upcoming meeting of the club’s sporting area which will be held by president Joan Laporta and probably take place in the next few days before the Blaugrana’s battle for second place in La Liga against Sevilla at Camp Nou on April 3.

As say that Xavi will attempt to give the operation “a boost” while aware that Haaland has an April 30 deadline set to make a decision on his future, and is “willing to offer himself again to talk to the player and try to convince him of the whims of the Blaugrana project” of which Haaland would be a “great cornerstone” after they reportedly met previously in Munich.

With the likes of Manchester City and Real Madrid also interested in Haaland, however, there has to be Plan B in place. To this end, then, Mundo Deportivo claim that Xavi’s alternative preferred option if Barca can’t pull off the Haaland coup is Ballon d’Or hopeful Salah.

According to the daily newspaper, Xavi loves “the quality of Salah starting freely from the right” to “unbalance” the opposition, as well as his wide-ranging goalscoring repertoire and versatility while acting as a winger or a false ‘9’.

Barca believe that at age 29, Salah still has “a lot of football in his boots for several seasons” and are aware of him currently opting not to extend his current contract at Anfield which expires in June 2023.

Similar to their supposed pursuit of Robert Lewandowski, Barca could test the Reds’ resolve in the preseason and get him for a reduced price considering that the Premier League giants might not wish to lose their star player on a free next summer.

The club’s sporting area thinks that Salah’s name fits into Xavi’s plans because he is a “different and special footballer, with enough personality to be the leader or one of the leaders of a project as he is demonstrating at Liverpool”.

At present, Salah is currently valued at €100mn ($110mn) but this could drop in the near future after the end of 2021/2022 when he enters the last 12 months of his contract.