Gerard Pique has sparked panic at Barcelonaafter appearing to backtrack on his ‘he stays’ tweet on teammate Neymar, target of a blockbuster transfer by Paris Saint Germain.<\/p>\n
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“Doubts, doubts and more doubts,” ran the headline Wednesday on the front page of Catalan daily Sport above a photo of the striker lost deep in thought.<\/p>\n
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PSG are trying to lure the 25-year-old Brazilian to France and are ready to pay off his 222 million euro ($256.8 million) release clause and make the player the best-paid footballer on the planet.<\/p>\n
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Last week Pique took to social media to say “he’s staying” – but when pressed on the matter Tuesday ahead of a pre-season friendly in the United States against Manchester United he was less sure of himself.<\/p>\n
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“It’s a personal opinion from the conversation that I had with him and my intuition,” Pique said.<\/p>\n
“But it’s not official,” he added. “And it’s not for me to say if he’s going to stay or not.”<\/p>\n
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The position sent a shudder down the spine at Barcelona.<\/p>\n
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“Pique retracts and feeds the uncertainty,” the newspaper Sport said.<\/p>\n
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“The situation is eroding confidence at the club,” columnist Tomas Andreu wrote in Sport.<\/p>\n
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“What really hurts here is the silence of the player himself, which in the end says a great deal.”<\/p>\n
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Neymar departed the stadium without addressing reporters after starring in a 2-1 win over Juventus on Saturday.<\/p>\n
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“They (the club) did not expect the negotiations with PSG and the player to go this far,” he said.<\/p>\n
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At the same press conference, the Argentine defender Javier Mascherano said he had told Neymar to carefully weigh up the pros and cons.<\/p>\n
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Mascherano added all the players, including Lionel Messi, had spoken the player to ask him to stay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gerard Pique has sparked panic at Barcelonaafter appearing to backtrack on his ‘he stays’ tweet on teammate Neymar, target of a blockbuster transfer by Paris Saint Germain. “Doubts, doubts and more doubts,” ran the headline Wednesday on the front page of Catalan daily Sport above a photo of the striker lost deep in thought. PSG are trying to lure the 25-year-old Brazilian to France and are ready to pay off his 222 million euro ($256.8 million) release clause and make the player the best-paid footballer on the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8711,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8712,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8710\/revisions\/8712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}