There are reports that Ousmane Dembele has already spoken to other clubs, knowing that he will not play for Barcelona next season.

El Desmarque say the player’s agent Moussa Sissoko has already spoken with Chelsea, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain – without permission of the Catalan giants.

The France international netted 14 goals this season but had been restricted to just 20 starts in La Liga and failed to sustain a run of games without further injuries.

Indeed, it has been confirmed that the forward will miss ten weeks of action with a thigh injury sustained against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League, report Football Espana.

The France international – who has been plagued by injuries since moving to the Camp Nou in the summer of 2017 – pulled up in the 25th minute of the clash against his former club.

Tests have confirmed Dembele has a muscle injury in his right thigh and the 22-year-old is now set to be out for a minimum of two months, and not returning to action until February.

Ernesto Valverde has warned that football community must prepare for life after Lionel Messi, admitting that the prospect of the Argentine retiring is “in the air”.

Messi himself suggested that the end of his playing days may not be too far away when accepting his record sixth Ballon d’Or award in Paris on Monday evening.

“It’s something natural,” he said. “It seems normal, Leo is 32-years-old and although I don’t think he’s thinking about retiring now it’s something which is in the air.

“But I don’t think we should go crazy about it, we have to look at it naturally. Everyone thinks about retirement when they get to a certain age, but just because he’s thinking about it doesn’t mean he’s going to retire in the next three days.”

Despite his age, Messi continues to produce remarkable performances, just last week producing a superb winning goal to see off Atletico Madrid in La Liga, and Valverde conceded he may not appreciate his star man’s genius until he is gone, report the Evening Standard.

“I’m aware of how lucky I am but sometimes the demands of everyday life means you are not allowed to enjoy everything. I think you appreciate these things more with time,” he added.

“I’m aware that I have the enormous fortune of being able to say in a few years I coached Leo.

“In the same way that older people talk about Di Stefano, we will be able to tell future generations that we lived through the Messi era and some people like me will be able to say we enjoyed it close by.”

Reports in Spain claim Atletico Madrid are set to do battle with Inter Milan for out-of-favour Chelsea striker Olivier Giroud in January.

According to Diario AS, the France international- who has featured just seven times this season, starting three – is however considered to be an option as reports suggest that Rojiblancos have their prime target.

It follows a report in Cadena Cope that RB Leipzig striker Timo Werner is the ‘primary objective’ for Atleti this January, while other reports claim it is Paris Saint-Germain striker Edinson Cavani.

Diego Costa has been sidelined with an injury until February, leaving Atleti short up front and short on goals this season.

The club are, according to Football Espana, at their salary cap and would need to offload players in order to sign anyone, with Santiago Arias and Sime Vrsaljko two players who may be shipped out of Wanda Metropolitano.

It is claimed that Costa could be sold to help fund a €60m approach for Werner, while Los Rojiblancos have also been linked to PSG striker Cavani this January.

Tottenham boss Jose Mourinho has warned Frank Lampard he will struggle to find a way of improving on his current crop of Chelsea players in the January transfer window.

Lampard has presided over an impressive start to his first season in charge at Stamford Bridge, despite having been prevented from bolstering his squad during the summer.

After CAS reduced Chelsea’s punishment for breaching regulations relating to the purchase of youth players, Lampard will have the opportunity to spend next month but Mourinho, now Tottenham manager, believes that comes with its own risks, report the Metro.

He said: “I’m not worried with that. First of all, I’m not looking to the distance we have to Chelsea. Between us and Chelsea there are still two or three teams, so you cannot look so high and so far in this moment.

“The second situation is for me that it’s not easy to get better players than they have – they have very good players.

“I don’t think even with a ban or even with a hypothetical multi-million budget to spend, I’m not very, very sure they can get much better players than they have.”

Mourinho, himself, will likely jump at the chance to spend once the window re-opens, particularly in light of Wednesday’s disappointing performance when he surrendered his 100% start to life as Spurs boss at Old Trafford.

Chelsea have slammed Fifa for “choosing to treat Manchester City entirely differently” after their transfer ban was lifted.

After the Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced their two-window punishment for breaching rules on signing underage players, the Blues were given the green light to enter the January market.

However the club released a statement on Friday questioning how they were dealt with compared to Premier League rivals City.

It read: “Chelsea is grateful to the CAS for the diligent approach that it gave this matter. The club has not yet received the written reasons for CAS’s decision but wishes to make the following clear:

“The approach taken by Fifa to this case has been deeply unsatisfactory, not least as Fifa chose to treat Chelsea entirely differently to Manchester City for reasons that make absolutely no sense to Chelsea.”

Their fury centred around City stretching out their own underage signing breaches so that they were judged under the 2019 version of Fifa regulations, allowing the Prem champs to plea bargain with Zurich bosses, whereas Chelsea case was dealt with under the previous rules in place, report The Sun.

Chelsea were furious at being initially found guilty of more than 150 breaches, arguing the vast majority were little more than administrative oversights not helped by a lack of clarity in both Fifa and FA regulations.

Blues lawyers are understood to have contended the punishment was disproportionate to the offences, while similar breaches at other clubs – including City – have gone unpunished.

The Blues also attacked a charge relating to 16 players – who they state were registered to the satisfaction of the Premier League and FA – as “perverse”.

In outling how the 27 youngsters involved in the case were signed, they say: “Of those, 16 players were registered by Chelsea in exactly the same way as other Premier League clubs registered players at the time.

“Furthermore, Chelsea sought clarification from the Premier League in 2009 about whether it needed to apply for permission to register players in this category.

“The FA subsequently liaised with Fifa and it was confirmed to Chelsea that players in this category were entitled to register and that no special application was required (and in fact no special application process existed).

“Accordingly, the fact that Fifa brought charges against Chelsea for this category of player was perverse. We are grateful that this appears to have been corrected by the CAS.”