Photo by James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images
Photo by James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images
Manchester United have become increasingly resigned to the fact that JJ Gabriel was about to leave the club, with Barcelona considered his priority club.
It has been almost two weeks since JJ Gabriel told Manchester United he wanted to leave the club, citing reasons of a lack of a first-team pathway and also the club’s downfall in a post-Sir Alex Ferguson era. Gabriel has been in Spain for talks, with his move seemingly imminent.
There were reported talks with both Real Madrid and Barcelona. With Deco and Florentino Perez both involved in the discussions to tempt Gabriel to join their clubs. But now Deco has spoken out about the links, which could mean a couple of things.
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Barcelona not interested in JJ Gabriel, according to Deco
Ben Jacobs took to X on Thursday after speaking with Barcelona chief Deco, with an interesting yet surprising admission made.
“There’s nothing to say about this boy”, the usually transparent Deco insisted. “It’s normal we always have players linked with us. There’s a huge market for that, even when they [players] are young.
“We are not interested in any player in his situation. I am not sure what’s happening, and if he’s still a Manchester United player. We are not involved in that.
“First of all, we need to understand how the situation is before we try to do something. And to speak about young, teenage players, it is not our business.”
This could be good news for United, with the long-standing narrative being that the club wasn’t giving up on convincing Gabriel to stay put right now. Perhaps this has been a successful ending, talks and giving Barcelona nothing to say.
But a more likely scenario would be that this suggests Real Madrid may have won the race for Gabriel’s signature, prompting Barcelona to almost save face and act like they were never in the running, instead of admitting defeat to their arch nemesis.
It is a strange statement to make from Barcelona’s point of view.