Barcola wants more playing time, Dembélé negotiates his salary: two hot issues for PSG
PSG is simultaneously working on contract extensions for Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembélé. While the 2025 Ballon d'Or winner appears inclined to stay, the former Lyon player is demanding more playing time—a guarantee Paris is struggling to offer.
French champions and Ligue des Champions title holders, PSG enters the off-season with two sensitive contract issues: the extensions of Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembélé, both currently competing in the 2026 World Cup. Sporting director Luis Campos is leading these negotiations.
On Barcola’s side, discussions are moving slowly. According to L’Équipe, the former Olympique Lyonnais player is in no rush to sign a new deal, demanding guarantees on playing time that the club cannot promise him. The atmosphere remains cordial—no clash is expected—but PSG, which would prefer to keep him, admits it is not “so opposed to a sale” if circumstances were to change. Luis Enrique, meanwhile, clearly wants to keep his winger. Discussions are expected to resume after the World Cup.
Dembélé’s case promises to be more straightforward in substance, but potentially more complex in form. The 2025 Ballon d’Or winner, also under contract until 2027, is described as eager to continue his Paris adventure. It is the salary question that constitutes the real crux of negotiations, and it is probably on this point that everything will be decided in the coming weeks.
Both issues illustrate PSG’s new post-QSI reality: a club that must now retain its stars by convincing them sportingly as much as financially, without being able to rely on purely financial arguments to clinch the deal.
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