Dembele contract latest: Final meeting with Barcelona to take place amid PSG threat

The January transfer window is nearing its end but FC Barcelona and Ousmane Dembele have not come to an agreement on the player's contract extension. The club is keen to find a solution as soon as possible and has set a meeting with his agent, Moussa Sissoko. However, new evidence suggests that Paris Saint-Germain may have called the agent to somehow influence his decision.

Dembele's camp has rejected Barcelona's offers thus far, and a final meeting is set to take place between the two sides this week. Sissoko was spotted arriving in Barcelona on Tuesday, and was interestingly photographed taking a call from a contact saved as "Leonardo PSG."

It comes as no surprise that Dembele's agent is receiving calls from someone who is assumed to be the PSG sporting director. They could be talking about Dembele's possible move or something else altogether. Either way, it was an interesting photograph which was shared by El Chiringuito on Twitter. Though the image has been making the rounds, its veracity has not been confirmed.

For now, it is believed that both the club and the player want to continue, but the current offer is not good enough. It remains to be seen if either side will budge, but Barcelona will surely take note of the supposed call from PSG. They know that the French giants can easily trump their offer on the financial side, so they may be forced to revise the deal that they last laid out on the table.

On the other hand, if a lucrative alternative has indeed been offered by PSG, then Dembele's agent will be even more confident in standing his ground while negotiating with the Catalan giants.

Manager Xavi Hernandez had been clear that he wanted Dembele to stay, but following the contract saga, he has left the player out of the squad in their most recent matches. Xavi thinks that the club's interests come first, and if the player does not renew on favourable terms, then he will have to be sold in order to free the club from his wages as soon as possible and hopefully generate more cash from a transfer fee.

They want to avoid letting Dembele leave on a free transfer when his contract expires in the summer, as they are still looking to recover some part of the €100million fee they paid to acquire him from Borussia Dortmund in 2017.

Dembele can technically wait out his current deal before moving to another club in July, but Barcelona want to offload him as soon as possible in order to get his wages off the bill. This will allow them to sign and register his possible replacement. They are looking into the possibility of terminating the player's contract prematurely if there is no way to finalise a sale in the next few days.

With clubs well aware of the situation, no one is interested in forking out cash for a transfer fee when they can wait six months and sign the player for free.