Barcola is set to sign to 2031, and Liverpool’s other two winger targets have gone the other way
Liverpool have agreed a deal with Paris Saint-Germain for Bradley Barcola worth up to about £123m. Ibrahim Mbaye is joining Aston Villa instead, and Yankuba Minteh is still priced out at Brighton.
Aug 29, 2026
On August 27 Liverpool wanted two wingers and looked like getting neither. Brighton had rejected two bids for Yankuba Minteh. Bradley Barcola had been left out of three Paris Saint-Germain squads in a row while the two clubs argued about a number neither would say out loud. With three days left before the English window shuts, one of those situations has resolved, and the other two names Liverpool were circling have gone elsewhere or gone nowhere.
The number, and the numbers around it
Sky Sports report the structure as £106m up front with up to £17m in add-ons, which tops out around £123m. ESPN, reporting two days earlier, put the package at 140 million euros with at least £100m guaranteed. The reports do not line up to the pound, which is normal when a deal is signed off in one currency and written up in another, but they agree on the shape: somewhere north of £100m guaranteed and a total in the low 120s.
Whichever figure lands, it makes Barcola the second-most expensive player Liverpool have bought. Alexander Isak still holds the club record and the British one, at £125m from Newcastle on deadline day in September 2025. PSG opened the summer asking for something closer to £145m, so the gap that stalled this for a month has been split rather than won.
He is 23, a France international, and had two years left in Paris. His contract at Anfield is reported to run to 2031. A medical is the outstanding item.
Villa took the one Liverpool also liked
Ibrahim Mbaye had been on Liverpool’s list too. He is going to Aston Villa instead, for £47m, with a medical due over the weekend. Villa turned to him after losing Rafa Leao to Galatasaray, which is a reminder that most of what happens in the last week of a window is somebody’s third choice arriving quickly.
Mbaye is 18 and a Senegal international. He played 24 Ligue 1 matches last season and finished with three goals and two assists, which is a respectable return for a teenager at a club that won Ligue 1 and the Champions League in the same year. He and Barcola had missed the same three PSG squads.
Minteh is stuck, and he cannot play anyway
The Minteh situation has not moved. Liverpool bid £50m, then £60m, and Brighton have made it known they want something near £70m. Brighton do not blink in these conversations and everyone involved knows it.
The stranger part is that Minteh had surgery on a right leg injury picked up in a pre-season friendly against Roma and is expected to be out for at least eight weeks. Liverpool spent a fortnight bidding heavily for a player who would not have kicked a ball for them until well into the autumn. Getting Barcola done makes that pursuit look less urgent than it did, and possibly finished.
PSG are the ones counting
Selling Barcola and Mbaye in the same week puts as much as £170m into PSG’s accounts, two forwards sold to two English clubs in the final days of a window when the buyer has the least room to negotiate. Barcola had turned down more than one contract extension, which left the club choosing between selling now at a peak and watching the value drain over 12 months. They sold.
English clubs have until 11pm on Tuesday, September 1, with a two-hour grace period for paperwork already filed. Liverpool have their winger. Whether they still want a second one, at Brighton’s price, for a player who cannot play until October, is the question the next four days answer.