Barcelona officially presented Jules Kounde on Monday morning, with the French defender pulling on the Blaugrana for the first time.
After the official photos and the signing of the deal was done, President Joan Laporta, Kounde and Sporting Director Mateu Alemany gave a press conference.
Laporta broke the news that Barcelona had agreed a deal to activate a third economic lever, which made all of the headlines.
Mixed in was an entertaining anecdote from Alemany, who highlighted Kounde’s motivation to play for Barcelona.
“First I want to point out something about the signing of Kounde. Every day or two days for two months, they were calling me to know about the [financial] fair play because Kounde wanted to come to Barca and he waited for us, I wanted to add that.”
“I even had to tell Jonathan [Kebe, Kounde’s agent] to stop calling me, because I didn’t have anything new to tell him. After securing the second level, Kounde had almost closed an agreement with another club, but he wanted to come to Barca.”
Barcelona appear to have sealed most of their major summer targets this time round and in no small part down to their strategy. Star signings Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha and Kounde all had the chance to go elsewhere but appear to have chosen Barcelona for the prestige and the project.
From there, Alemany has been able to leverage that desire in his negotiations with the clubs, in the knowledge that for at least two of them, Barcelona had priority over others.
