Barcelona´s bid for Fabregas stalls

Barcelona president Sandro Rosell said on Friday that the club’s bid to sign Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal had stalled and they may have to wait until next year to recruit the midfielder.

“Arsenal feel very hurt by Barca. They don’t want to listen to offers or sell and they are not putting the player on the market,” he told Catalan television channel TV3.

But Rosell, who took over from Joan Laporta as Barcelona president on July 1, remained confident that Fabregas will return to the Spanish club one day.

“He will arrive, even if it is not now, it will be next year,” he said.

“We will see. One thing that is certain is that we will not go mad trying to sign him. No shareholder would pay 60 or 70 million euros for him. We will not go all out for him. We would only pay his value on the transfer market.”

In June, Arsenal rejected a 35-million-euro offer from the Spanish champions for Fabregas, who began his career in Barcelona’s youth academy before joining the English side in 2003 at the age of 16.

The Arsenal captain’s value is thought to have swelled after his good performances during the World Cup, which Spain won on Sunday with a 1-0 defeat of the Netherlands. He is under contract with Arsenal until June 2015.

Barcelona’s vice-president for finance, Javier Faus, said on Thursday that the club have set aside 50 million euros to spend on new players after they secured a bank loan of 155 million euros to solve their cash-flow problems.