Barcelona, July 04: FC Barcelona has threatened to sell its striker Patrick Kluivert if it doesn't receive a swift response from the Dutch international to its reduced pay offer, news reports said yesterday.
"We all want him to stay and we know he likes being here and holds Barcelona in high esteem. He's a player who can make the club great again. But we need a reply urgently. If he's not going to carry on we need to find a substitute," the club's technical director Txiki Begiristain was quoted as saying by sports daily Mundo Deportivo yesterday.
With Barcelona laboring under a reported 230 million (US$ 263 million) debt, new president Joan Laporta has been striving to reduce its total wage bill since he won the presidential election on June 15.
This week, Dutch midfielder Philip Cocu reportedly took a wage cut to remain at the Catalan club for another year, while the contract of another Dutch player, defender Frank De Boer, has not been renewed.
Begiristain said that Kluivert, who is on holiday in Surinam, had been informed that Barcelona would enforce the clause in his contract which allows the club to withhold a bonus of 4.6 million euros (US$5.3 million). As a consequence, the terms of the contract state that Kluivert's buy-out clause would be slashed, easing the way for him to leave.


Bureau Report