Raphinha Refuses To Join Chelsea, Waits For FC Barcelona

Raphinha is refusing to join Chelsea from Leeds United and has advised his agent Deco to stop the west London club’s offensive for him.

Amid interest from the likes of FC Barcelona and Arsenal, Chelsea entered the race for the winger by lodging a bid said to be worth more than £55mn ($67mn) this week.

This urged Barca to look lively and put in their own offer for the Brazil international on Wednesday, which was rejected by Raphinha’s Yorkshire employers.

It goes without saying that the proposal was below what Chelsea offered for the 25-year-old. But with Barca now making their first official approach for the Qatar 2022 World Cup hopeful, he has reportedly advised his agent and Barca legend Deco to reject Chelsea.

According to SPORT on Friday morning, Raphinha is effectively refusing to join the Blues and has advised Deco to stop their offensive for him.

This is because he prioritizes a move to Barca above all else, with Deco communicating this to director of football Mateu Alemany in a meeting this week.

Raphinha has dreamed of donning Blaugrana since his infancy in Porto Alegre. For this reason, he will not enter into any salary negotiations with Chelsea who look set to be disappointed in their last minute operation to snatch him away in a week where Ousmane Dembele’s contract expired.

Chelsea have also been linked to the French forward, who became a free agent at the stroke of midnight on Friday after five underwhelming years at Camp Nou which only showed promise in their final six months when first team coach Xavi Hernandez managed to extract top form from him.

With up to $280 million secured by Barca’s deal to sell 10% of their La Liga television rights to American investment firm Sixth Street, there is hope that the Catalans could come close to matching Chelsea’s offer in the coming weeks despite being mired in debts of around $1.5bn.

Raphinha and Deco have played the waiting game, and their approach seems to be paying off in order to get both the player and Barca what they want ahead of the new 2022/2023 season.