Manchester City have told Barcelona they will pay £100m for Lionel Messi.
That’s according to rumours in today’s Sun, which claims that the City are ready to top the £89m that their rivals United spent on Paul Pogba from Juventus to get the Argentine phenomenon into their team.
Furthermore, the paper say that executives from the two clubs met each other last month to discuss a possible world record transfer.
While the Citizens did not lodge an official bid for Messi at that time, they made it very clear that they had no problem with breaking the world transfer record to sign him. Frankly this probably didn’t need saying as Barcelona would be unlikely to accept anything other than a record bid.
City chiefs are apparently hopeful that the personal connection between Messi and manager Pep Guardiola will be able to seal a deal which otherwise looks hopeless unless the Etihad hierarchy are willing to double this bid for the superstar.