Mikayil Faye’s situation scared Belgian gem from joining Barcelona | OneFootball

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Not every operation that FC Barcelona pursues necessarily comes to fruition. Such is the nature of not just the club but of the footballing world in general. However, there are some cases that take priority for Barcelona while others are not pursued beyond initial interest.

It would appear that the latter situation is true for the case of talented Belgian defender Jorthy Mokio. One of the names most heavily linked to Barcelona during the early stages of the transfer window, the 16-year-old defender could ultimately not move from Gent to Barça and instead decided to move to Dutch side Ajax.

With his signing with Ajax now official, the nature of his fallout with Barcelona has also come to light recently. Apparently, the final decision was made by the talented Belgian defender’s father, Thierry Mokio, and it was not for financial reasons as some reports suggested according to him.

As pointed out by SPORT, the player’s father, and representative recently confirmed that there were talks with Barcelona and that his son was very close to joining the Catalan Club, even saying that there was hope that he would be able to be integrated into the first team like Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsi got the opportunity to do:

“They told us they were going to do the same as with Lamine Yamal or Cubarsí. We spoke with Deco, the sporting director, and he said my son would train with the first team.”

However, according to the father of Jorthy Mokio, the reason behind why he ultimately did not end up letting his son sign for Barça was partly because of the peculiar case of Mikayil Faye being offered to Porto. To him, the idea of such a talented defender being up for sale made him feel that his son could one day be going through the exact same thing:

“The pressure at Barça is on another level. If it doesn’t work out, you end up at Osasuna, for example, and you’re lost. It seemed like too big a step. It’s true that there was a moment when we had decided to sign with Barça, but then we saw that they wanted to sell a 19-year-old defender to Porto. It was too much; I couldn’t do that to my son.”

Thus, according to him, the reason why the Mokios chose Ajax over Barcelona was simply sporting based. The 16-year-old defender’s future now lies with Ajax over in the Netherlands, and Barcelona will move on towards other targets. Fortunately for the Catalan giants, they have a lot of interesting developments