Joan Laporta hoping to rebuild Barcelona around Erling Haaland
By Tom Gott
Barcelona president Joan Laporta is keen to reinvent the squad this summer and dreams of building his team around Borussia Dortmund striker Erling Haaland.
The Norway international is arguably the most wanted man in football these days, with every big club on the planet tipped to try to put together bids of over £100m to lure him away from Signal Iduna Park this summer.
The strongest links usually involve Manchester City, Chelsea or Real Madrid, but according to AS, Barcelona are ready to throw their hat into the ring and try to bring Haaland over to Camp Nou at the end of the season.
Laporta is said to be 'obsessed' with the idea of signing Haaland and hopes to take advantage of his close relationship with the striker's agent, Mino Raiola, to attempt to get a deal done this summer.
The newly-elected president believes getting a new striker should be one of the team's top priorities, so much so that he is also open to the idea of signing City's Sergio Aguero. TyC Sports even go as far as to say that Barcelona have lodged a formal offer with the Argentine.
The obvious concern with all this is Barcelona financial instability. They were run into the ground under former president Josep Maria Bartomeu, with the club facing debts of close to £1bn, and Wednesday's elimination from the Champions League at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain at the last 16 stage won't have helped things on that front.
However, Laporta is still confident that Barcelona can make a major splash this summer. He is already hard at work looking at ways to free up a significant sum of money for transfers and dreams of spending a chunk of that on Haaland.
After Haaland, Laporta's secondary focus is expected to be on Bayern Munich's David Alaba, who will be available as a free agent this summer. There have already been rumours suggesting the Austrian has reached an agreement to move to Camp Nou, but his agent Pini Zahavi rubbished those reports in an interview with Goal.
Laporta will prioritise Haaland, and he obviously wants to tie Lionel Messi down to a new deal, but if the wage budget allows it, he is expected to go hard for Alaba.
If signing Alaba is not possible, Laporta will turn to 'smaller' targets like City's Eric Garcia, who is expected to join on a free transfer himself.
Lyon's Memphis Depay also comes into play here. The Dutchman is out of contract at the end of the season and has already agreed terms over a potential move to Camp Nou, but Barcelona are waiting to see whether any of their top targets become available before pulling the trigger.
With so many players potentially coming through the door, Laporta is prepared to cut ties with some of the current members of his first team.
Philippe Coutinho and Antoine Griezmann are both mentioned as likely casualties, with Laporta keen to cash in and raise enough money to fund the overhaul of his squad.