Tito Vilanova has congratulated Neymar on deciding to join Barcelona even when other ‘important offers’ were available to him.
After two weeks of negotiations, Barca announced over the weekend that they had agreed a reported €25m fee with Santos for the 21-year-old’s transfer this summer.
For the Coach Neymar will be working with next season, the move is news to be welcomed.
“I am grateful to the club and the technical secretariat for seeing in advance that this player would be great,” commented Vilanova on Sunday evening.
“When Barca took an interest in him it’s quite possible that other clubs hadn’t and that helped us in the negotiations, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to compete because there were important offers on the table.
“I congratulate the player for selecting an athletic project and not a economic one.
“He will bring things to the team but we also need to evaluate what we have here, these players are the ones that have made us good and strong team.
“We’ll see how he adapts to Europe, but we’re confident that it will go well for him. We’re here to help him so that he can make us an even bigger club.
“He was a priority. We were looking to reinforce our attack and we’d been getting reports on him for two-and-a-half years.
“The manager can be bad as long as we have a lot of good players…”
Vilanova was talking to reporters after Barca’s 2-0 win at Espanyol on Sunday evening, which leaves them on 97 points with one game left.
Three points at home to Malaga in Week 38 will match Real Madrid’s record set last year of 100 points in a League campaign.
“It’s not a title but we have a chance to do it, and it would be stupid if we didn’t try.
“We’re coming into the end of the season on form. Seeing what we’ve done, and how we’ve done it, says a lot about the team and how eager the players are.
“We would have gone to another level if we would have progressed past the semi-finals of the Champions League.”
