Barcelona sporting director Deco has warned rival clubs off thinking they will ever have a chance of signing teenage superstar Lamine Yamal.
Yamal has made an enormous impact at Barcelona, having become arguably the club’s most important player last season when he was still just 16 years of age.
Paris Saint-Germain made a world record €250m offer for Yamal last summer. In the words of presidential adviser Enric Masip a few months later, it was “never even considered”.
Now, Deco has reiterated that selling Yamal for any price would be a non-starter.
“There are key players, and he is one. There is no discussion, there is no price. There have been no offers because we didn’t even want to talk about it,” Deco told TV3.
“He will probably be at Barca for many years, like Pedri and Gavi. No matter how well things go, they will end up here.
“Lamine Yamal is one of the special ones. He not only has talent. He also has a different mental capacity. The club has to do its homework and he will be here for many years.”
Yamal hasn’t signed a contract since October 2023 and his current deal is due to expire at the end of next season. However, his release clause is already set at a prohibitive €1bn and an agreement over a new long-term deal until 2030 is believed to have been reached. Yamal himself said publicly last month that he think the contract will be signed “soon”.
Barcelona have learned their lesson when it comes to release clauses. Yamal’s €1bn clause matches up with the rest of the club’s top stars, a similar policy that Real Madrid have employed for well over a decade. But the Catalans had to get burnt before they followed suit, losing Neymar against their will when PSG triggered a €222m release clause in the summer of 2017.