Barcelona to push for Dani Olmo in January after agreeing contract
Barcelona will attempt to sign Dani Olmo from RB Leipzig in January, having already agreed a five-year contract in principle.
The 23-year-old has been in the Bundesliga for a little over 18 months after joining from Dinamo Zagreb, penning a four-year deal upon his arrival.
He has put in a number of quality performances since his January 2020 arrival, helping to fire Leipzig into a maiden Champions League semi-final appearance as well as becoming a regular starter for Spain.
Now it seems as if Olmo has caught the attention of Barcelona, whom he surprisingly left in 2014 to move to Zagreb. In fact, Mundo Deportivo report that the Catalan giants engaged in talks with Leipzig late on in the summer transfer window, with the intention of bringing him back to Spain this summer.
MD note that Olmo agreed to a five-year contract, but the two clubs were unable to settle on a fee before the transfer deadline. In a separate report, Mundo state that Olmo will now be Barça's priority signing in 2022, as the club look to piece themselves back together after a complete overhaul of their squad - one that has seen the club clear hundreds of millions of Euros off their wage budget.
The highest profile departure, it goes without saying, was Lionel Messi, who Barça were forced to release after it became apparent that they could not comply with La Liga's salary cap were he to stay.
Antoine Griezmann is another exceptionally high earner now off the wage bill - he's rejoined Atletico Madrid on a season-long loan - as is Miralem Pjanic, whose nightmare spell at Camp Nou has been ended by a loan move to Turkish giants Besiktas.
A number of senior first team players, including Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba, have also taken significant pay cuts so that new signings Memphis Depay, Eric Garcia and Sergio Aguero - who all arrived on free transfers - can be registered to play.
Olmo may be the first piece of a rebuilding jigsaw for president Joan Laporta and manager Ronald Koeman, though it may take some time before Barcelona once again have the financial firepower to mix it with the biggest clubs in Europe.