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Gerard Pique: 'Barcelona players offered to restructure wages for Neymar return'

Pique: 'Barca players tried to aid Neymar return'
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Gerard Pique says that both he and his Barcelona teammates offered to restructure their salaries in order to aid Neymar's proposed return to Camp Nou.

Gerard Pique has suggested that members of the Barcelona squad were open to restructuring their salaries in order to boost the club's chances of re-signing Neymar.

Throughout the summer transfer window, Neymar was strongly linked with a return to Camp Nou, just two years after moving to Paris Saint-Germain for a world-record fee.

However, due to issues with complying with FFP, Barcelona were forced to scrap plans to hand the Brazil international a second spell at the club.

Speaking to Cadena Ser, Pique has revealed that efforts were made in the dressing room in order to be reunited with their former teammate.

The centre-back said: "We didn't stump up money. What we said to the president was whether we could change our contracts because we knew there was a Financial Fair Play issue, so we said to the president, rather than earn something in year one, we could earn it in year two or three or four.

"At the end of the day we want to go along with what the club is doing and if we can help the club, in this case avoiding a financial fair problem, we've got no problem in doing that.

"Rather than reducing our salary it was about finding a formula so that if the club wanted to sign Ney they could. At the time they thought it was a good idea, but then other problems cropped up."

Neymar has since remained at Parc des Princes, where he has a contract until the end of the 2021-22 campaign.

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Neymar celebrates scoring for PSG on September 14, 2019
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