Depay could leave cash-strapped Barcelona in €40m deal
AS Roma are reportedly eyeing up a summer move for Barcelona’s Memphis Depay.
The Netherlands international only joined the Blaugrana in June on a free transfer after his contract with Lyon came to an end.
Depay took the No.9 shirt at the Nou Camp and has eight goals and two assists in 14 La Liga outings thus far.
But El Nacional say Roma are keen on bringing him to Serie A and reckon Barcelona might be tempted into offloading the 27-year-old due to their ongoing financial difficulties.
The Giallorossi would look to do a deal for around €40 million (£34 million), with Depay contracted with Barca until 2023.
Barca are £1.16 billion in debt and had to ask players to take hefty salary cuts in the summer so that new signings could be registered.
The Catalan club have also unveiled plans to renovate the Nou Camp and increase the capacity to 110,000. But the project is an expensive one and Barca have to borrow £1.27 billion to finance it.
Depay, meanwhile, played under current Roma boss Jose Mourinho very briefly at Manchester United after he took over from Louis van Gaal.
He didn’t feature all that regularly but Mourinho still enjoyed working with him and believes he went up another level during his four seasons with Lyon.
“He is a really good professional. People can look at him and probably think he’s a party boy,” Mourinho told talkSPORT in the summer.
“I think he got this maturity in Lyon which is sometimes what players need.
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“Sometimes they can go too early to the biggest clubs where they are not ready to cope with it. Where they are not ready to understand that in the biggest clubs there are internal competition, that you can not play all the time. That there are fantastic players to fight with you for a position. They can lose a little sense of reality and become a bit childish. Which is what happened.
“I believe the Barcelona culture of football will help him also to level up in this important part of his career. But good memories of him and I repeat – he was a good professional.”