Barcelona President Juan Laporta admitted that his club targets Mbappe, but the player is demanding a mouth-watering annual salary which is out of Barcelona's reach, due to the economic conditions in the club, so negotiations with him did not succeed. Joan Laporta has made these in a press statement to MARCA, the Spanish national daily sports newspaper owned by Unidad Editorial: "If we are able to activate one or two economic plans before June 30, we will have liquidated a large part of the club's debts." 
Laporta went on to say: "If we manage to clean up the club's finances, we will have fair play, cash … I don't know if there will be sales."
"There are things that even if we had the money to do it, we wouldn't because it distorts our wage bill and that cannot happen again. It is something we are instilling in the club in all areas," Laporta told Catalunya Radio.
"We can't go past a certain level of spending. Mbappe is asking for 40-50 million [euros] net. He wants 50 [million euros] net. Mbappe is at the highest level but hasn't won the Champions League. That must also be taken into account.
"We will not talk about salaries of 25, 30 or 40 [million euros] net. It would be offensive to players who are expected to be a reference in world football and are just starting out at Barcelona. We are not going to do that, nor do we want to."
On Ousmane Dembele, Laporta commented: "He wants to stay, but he is very fond of other options that provide conditions that they may consider better than ours."
About the future of Frenkie de Jong, Laporta reacts: "There are players from Barcelona that are desirable in the market and we will do what is best for Barcelona. If we can clean up the club's finances, we will have fair play and money."