Neymar wasn't the only Barcelona player Paris Saint-Germain were after this summer, with reports claiming that Lionel Messi was in fact even higher up on their list of priorities.
Last summer, the Argentine's entourage made quite clear that the player intends to stay at the Blaugrana for the foreseeable future, so the French club turned to the Brazilian, also to little success.
Unlike Neymar, who supposedly listened to initial offers before declining, Messi never even considered the possibility.The former Santos man is now set to stay at the Camp Nou for the foreseeable future, having penned an extended contract with the Catalan club last Friday.
French newspaper L'Equipe reported on Tuesday that Neymar's father went as far as meeting with members of the PSG hierarchy in the summer to discuss terms of the deal.
His request for the player to make the move to the Parc des Princes was a 35 million euro annual salary and for the Ligue 1 champions to pay off his 40m euro debts.PSG did not view his salary demands as a problem but drew the line at writing off the striker's debts, who considered that request to be much too extreme.
Prior to that meeting between the club and Neymar's father, his agent Wagner Ribeiro had met with Paris Saint-Germain officials in April in Sao Paulo and again in Ibiza, with the Brazil international earmarked as the perfect replacement for Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
PSG owner Emir Tamim Al Thani's number one priority was Neymar's Barcelona teammate Lionel Messi but quickly gave up on that idea when he discovered that the Argentine had no intention of leaving the Camp Nou.
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