Barcelona director of football Deco may have sent an unintended swipe at Bournemouth's Julian Araujo; by hinting he wasn't considered a key player for them.

That's at least according to the Mexican edition of AS, who cover comments from the Barcelona director today and his attempts to make Araujo's departure 'less'.

Araujo joined Bournemouth in a EUR10m deal midway through August as Barcelona looked to secure sales to open up space in their budget for signings.

A deal was quickly wrapped up between the two sides for the player, who never made a single appearance for Barcelona after joining their academy in January 2023.

He was moved up to the senior side in July last year but then shipped out to Las Palmas on loan for a season, making 28 appearances in total.

On the face of it his departure is not all that surprising, but eyebrows could certainly have been raised give Deco, and indeed the rest of the club, had been publicly stating that youngsters would not be sold to help balance the books. That wasn't the case with Araujo but now Deco has hinted the Bournemouth man was never really a part of their long-term plans anyway.

"The idea was that, if the young players worked, we didn't have to go to the market so much," he said.

"We had to find the balance and know what would be missing and I think we found it. Like the signing of Dani Olmo, which gives us balance in the centre of the field, has a different profile, we gained offensive quality.

"There were offers for several of our players, but we were clear that we did not want to lose important footballers, if we are building a team, we could not undo it. We had to increase the level, not lowering it and selling some important footballer is lowering it.

"We couldn't fall into the temptation of selling, but it wasn't easy. Not selling is very complicated because you can't buy. But we were very clear that the important thing was not to sell to the important players and know what we had at home."