Gerard Pique hopes Erling Haaland will reject Real Madrid and Chelsea for Barcelona move

Stefan Bienkowski

• 12 Jun 2021 09:18 BST
• 3 min read

Barcelona legend Gerard Pique has admitted that he hopes Borussia Dortmund striker Erling Haaland joins the Catalan club in the near future.

The Norwegian striker has attracted the interest of just about every major club in Europe, following a spectacular run of form that hasn’t abated since he made the move to Germany in January 2020.

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In that time Haaland has amassed no less than 57 goals and 15 assists in 59 games for Dortmund and helped the club win a German Cup.

As such, the young talent is being tracked by big clubs with deep pockets. Most notable among them being Real Madrid, Chelsea and Manchester City.

However, Pique hopes the towering talent will ignore interest from England or the Spanish capital and instead make the move to Barcelona when he eventually decides to leave Dortmund.

"I hope that he comes [to Barcelona]," Pique said to YouTuber Ibai Llanos.

"The great players should be with us, but that's a decision for the club to make. They will know."

Could Barcelona afford to sign Erling Haaland?

While Pique and every other Barcelona fan the world over remains hopeful of Haaland arriving at the Camp Nou in the future, it remains unlikely that the Dortmund star will pick the Catalan side when he does move on from Germany.

For a start, the Spanish giants are in the midst of a serious financial crisis and look severely limited in what kind of players they can bring to the club.

While the likes of Sergio Aguero, Gini Wijnaldum and Eric Garcia are top players, they were all identified by Barcelona because they didn’t require a transfer fee. And unless Barca can shift genuine stars like Antoine Griezmann or Ousmanne Dembele for more than €100 million it seems unlikely that the club could match Dortmund’s asking price for Haaland.