Barcelona sound out Laporte and run into an €80m asking price

Aymeric Laporte’s strong World Cup has reignited big clubs’ interest in the Athletic Bilbao centre-back. At 31, the defender formed a solid partnership with Pau Cubarsí for Spain and, it is understood, has already caught the direct attention of Barcelona’s board.

Deco watched the player closely

Deco, the Catalan club’s football director, personally attended more than one Spain match during the tournament to watch Laporte in person. That is not a trivial move: executives tend to reserve trips like this for priority targets, and the Basque defender’s name joined that list after his assured displays in the Spanish back line.

Bilbao’s answer, though, came with no middle ground. The Basque directors set 80 million euros as the floor for negotiating the player’s departure, a figure that underlines the club’s confidence in the asset it recovered after a notable effort to bring him back.

A return full of bureaucratic hurdles

It is worth recalling the tortuous path to that return. Laporte terminated his contract with Al-Nassr of Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2025, but FIFA initially took the view that the termination paperwork had not been closed within the deadline. That held up the issuing of his international transfer certificate and left the player in limbo for weeks.

Bilbao appealed, the Spanish federation backed the request, and the decision was eventually overturned. The defender was thus reunited with the club that made him as a professional, eight years after leaving for the Premier League.

A regular for the national team, and a Real Madrid target too

Since his Spain debut, Laporte has rarely been left out when fit, both under Luis Enrique and under the current management of Luis de la Fuente. Some questioned his call-up for the World Cup before the competition began; his answer on the pitch dispelled much of that doubt.

Real Madrid have also been linked with the player in recent speculation, but it was Barcelona who made a formal enquiry through Deco. Laporte’s contract with Athletic still has two years to run, and he has already made 54 appearances in the Spain shirt since the 2021 European Championship – numbers that help explain why the Basque club has no intention of letting him go for less than 80 million.