Barcelona to sign Jorge Salinas ahead of Newcastle - Report

Newcastle United have been linked with Racing Santander left-back Jorge Salinas recently, but they may be about to miss out on the 19-year-old.

Jorge Salinas has been catching the eye of several clubs after his impressive outings for Racing Santander, and it was recently revealed that Newcastle was one of them.

It also came to light that the Spanish youngster has a £13.8 million release clause, but that doesn't kick in until July. In June, the release clause is just £6.9 million.

We recently wrote that if Newcastle were remotely serious about signing Salinas, then they need to get their act together and move quickly while he's essentially 50% off.

Barcelona have made their move

Now, though, The Athletic is reporting that it's Barcelona who are set to take advantage of this release clause quirk.

They claim that Barca have already made an approach for the youngster and are likely to send him out on loan if he signs.

There's no mention of whether any other clubs are looking to rival the Spanish giants for his signature at this point, but our feeling is that Newcastle will not be one of them if there are.

We feel Newcastle weren't too interested

The Magpies would have less than a week to convince the lad to reject Barcelona and come to Newcastle before his asking price doubles, and with all the will in the world, we just don't see that happening.

We would say, however, that the fact that we haven't (at least to our knowledge) engaged in trying to bring Salinas to Tyneside already suggests that he's not part of our summer plans.

Jorge Salinas feels like one of those players that will be reported as one we missed out on, but in reality, we were never really in for him, which is a bit of a shame as he sounded like a bargain - and we do need cover for Lewis Hall.