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MADRID: Barcelona will refuse to pay 40 million euros (35 million pounds) for Arsenal skipper Cesc Fabregas although he “really wants” to transfer, according to Barcelona president Sandro Rosell.
“I don't know if we will sign Cesc or not. What I have no doubt of is that he really wants to come to Barca,” Rosell told Catalan television TV3 in an interview late Monday.
Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola knows that every player has a value “and that Cesc is worth less than 40 million. We will offer less than 40 million and if Arsenal don't accept it, Cesc won't come,” Rosell said.
“This year we won't offer the same as last year because a year has gone by and Cesc today is not worth 40 million.”
Gunners coach Arsene Wenger had insisted last month that he was determined to spend a second successive summer fighting off mighty Barcelona to keep Fabregas at the Emirates.
But Spanish media say he has since decided not to fight the move.
The Gunners turned down a bid from the Spanish champions last year for a player who spent his junior days at Barcelona before joining Arsenal at the age of 16 in 2003.
“I am a Barca supporter. I am a member like my grandfather, my uncle, my cousin,” Fabregas said last year.
“I love their colours since I was very small. I am Catalan. However, I am captain of Arsenal, I am a Gunner and it is there that I have become a player and that I have matured as a person.”
Rosell, who took over as president from Joan Laporta in July 2010, also said “nothing was closed” regarding the transfer of Chilean international forward Alexis Sanchez from Italian side Udinese.
Spanish sports media have said the 22-year-old, who is under contract with Udinese until June 2014, is close to joining the European champions.
“We don't have money for signings. When we arrived we saw that the club's debt was much higher than what was being stated,” the Barcelona president added when asked about the possibility of signing either Sanchez or Italian striker Giuseppe Rossi from Villarreal.
“Only one of the two will come,” he said said.
Rosell said cost-cutting measures put in place since he became president “were necessary for the sustainability of the club”. Banning colour photocopies alone “saves us 300,000 euros”, he said.
Shortly after Rosell's arrival, Barcelona secured a 150 million euro bank loan to help pay player and staff wages.
