No agreement yet between Barcelona and Ilaix Moriba

The saga between Barcelona and midfielder Ilaix Moriba shows no sign of coming to a resolution anytime soon despite the latest meeting between the club and his representatives.

A meeting was supposed to be held on Monday but was postponed until Wednesday. No progress was made in the meeting despite early optimism.

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No headway made in latest talks between Barcelona and the player’s agents

According to Sport, the feeling within the club has not taken a more pessimistic turn as a renewal is looking more and more complicated with the two sides still far apart in terms of wages.

The latest round of negotiations left Barça with the feeling both Ilaix and his representatives do not want to negotiate. Neither side is budging and time is quickly running out.

Manager Ronald Koeman was hoping to have Ilaix available for the team’s preseason matches in Germany. With no agreement in place, that was not the case.

In order to exert pressure, the Catalans demoted Ilaix and is training with Barça B. However, he is not being allowed to play with the youth team and has been left out of their two preseason matches.

Salary is the key issue in negotiations as Barcelona simply cannot afford to pay Ilaix what they are asking given they’re in the middle of asking almost everyone to lower their wages. The optics would be incongruent if they then went and splashed the cash on wages on a player who only recently made his debut with the senior team.

Unfortunately, the lack of progress and the filtering of information — which may or may not be true — has resulted in Ilaix receiving racist abuse on social media.

Barcelona did come out and show their support for Ilaix but it’s another sign a deal, or a resolution, needs to be reached quickly.

He impressed Koeman last season and he’s had a meteoric rise from the youth team to the first team. He has said in the past he wants to stay but in order to do so, he, or his representatives, are going to need to lower their demands otherwise Barcelona will have little recourse but to try to move him this summer.