Neymar has informed Paris Saint-Germain that he wants to leave the club this summer.
Ideally, he would like to return to Barcelona but it is difficult to see how they can afford him because of their financial problems.
He has three years left to run on his £25m-a-year contract. There remains a question over whether he is jumping or being pushed.
At 31, he is not thought to be a key player for new head coach Luis Enrique as he builds a new side. PSG have been open to selling him in order to focus on building a younger, hungrier team.
There were discussions with Chelsea in January. It has been a turbulent summer in Paris with Lionel Messi leaving and the high-profile standoff with Kylian Mbappe.
The club did not comment on the matter when approached by Sky Sports News, but it is understood that the Brazil superstar, who is under contract until 2025, has yet to formally communicate his intention to leave to the club’s executives.
The club are resigned to either selling France striker Mbappe this summer or losing him for nothing next summer, when he will be out of contract.
Messi left the club earlier this summer to join Inter Miami and, if Neymar and Mbappe follow him out of PSG, it will well and truly mark the end of an era.
The club are trying to shake off what their president Nasser Al-Khelaifi has previously described as their “bling bling” image of the past and work to develop more players organically rather than bring in top-of-the-range superstars.
Neymar was arguably the epitome of the old approach, with PSG smashing the world transfer record to sign him from Barcelona in 2017 for 222 million euros (£200m at the time).
He has won France’s Ligue 1 title five times since joining PSG but has failed to add to the single Champions League crown he won with Barca in 2015.
Mbappe, meanwhile, has been left out of PSG’s main training group as the standoff over his contract continues.
PSG sources are convinced he has already reached an agreement to officially sign for Real Madrid when his contract expires and benefit from a 160m euro signing-on fee as a free agent.
PSG are understood to have even offered Mbappe a new contract with a “guaranteed sale” clause in it confirming he can leave for a fee next summer, but sources say his representatives have refused to engage on that, or any other, offer they have made.
PSG gave Al Hilal permission to speak to Mbappe after the Saudi club tabled a world record £259million offer last month. However, it was reported Mbappe and his representatives declined to even meet a delegation from the club when they visited Paris.
Chelsea and Barcelona are also understood to be trying to put together player-plus-cash deals to bring in Mbappe, who won the World Cup with France in 2018 and also starred at last year’s finals in Qatar.
