Paris Saint Germain are planning to sign Antoine Griezmann from Atletico Madrid in the event that Neymar ends up moving back to Spain.
The Brazilian has been heavily linked with a La Liga switch in recent weeks, with reported interest from his former club Barcelona and Real Madrid surfacing – as per The Express.
Neymar became the world’s most expensive player when he swapped the Camp Nou for the Parc Des Princes in the summer of 2017 for an astonishing £200 million fee – as BBC Sport reports – and he has been extremely successful during his first year in Paris.
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Scoring 39 goals in his first 40 appearances for the French giants helped him earn instant hero status among PSG supporters, but according to The Sun, the ever elusive winger wants to secure a return to Barcelona.
Should Neymar indeed end up leaving PSG in 2019, the club is already lining up Griezmann as their number one target, who became a World Cup winner with France in Russia over the summer.
The 27-year-old superstar is one of the best players in Europe and as such Atletico have included a huge €150 million release clause in his current contract, to ward off any potential suitors – as per Bleacher Report.
However, any sale of Neymar would likely see PSG rake in far more than that and they would be free to spend those funds on the Frenchman, which would soften the blow of losing their talismanic attacker.
The Parisians are a huge superpower in world football these days and their ultimate aim is to conquer the Champions League in the near future, meaning they cannot afford to sell their best players without having a suitable plan in place.
Acquiring Greizmann is their plan and he might fancy a change of scenery given next year after four seasons of service with Atletico as their most prized asset.
It remains to be seen whether or not this deal can be arranged in 2019, but Neymar’s future seems to be very much up in the air at the moment and therefore there is likely to be plenty of new developments in this story between now and the reopening of the transfer window.