Neymar inched closer to his £200m move to Paris Saint-Germain on Thursday afternoon.
A statement from Barcelona confirmed that the player’s legal representatives had paid the Brazilian’s buyout clause, with his PSG unveiling due on Friday, according to some reports.
Inevitably, news of the seemingly imminent world record-breaking deal has prompted plenty of reaction from across the football world. Ahead of this weekend’s Community Shield at Wembley, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger explained that the transfer leaves his club unable to compete financially.
“Once countries own football clubs everything is possible and it has become very difficult to respect Financial Fair Play.
“We [Arsenal] still live with rationality and we are not the only ones. I think 99 per cent of the clubs do that – but of course we cannot compete at that level.”
Arsenal have broken their own transfer record this summer, paying £44million for French striker Alexandre Lacazette – not even a quarter of the fee PSG have parted with to land Neymar.
“We crossed the £100m line last year and only one year later, we’re crossing the £200m line,” Wenger added.
“When you think that Trevor Francis was the first £1m player and that looked unreasonable, that shows you how much distance and how far we have come, how big football has become. It’s beyond calculation and beyond rationality.
“This is why I always pleaded for football to live within its means. The numbers are now comparable to the NBA basketball. They are out of context with society.
“The price of a player depends on the identity of the buyer and you can not put it on the context of the market. It is the financial potential of the buyer that decides.”
