Barcelona turn their attention to Ajax's highly rated midfielder Frenkie de Jong Transfer Market Amsterdam club appear unwilling to sell

Barcelona's efforts to strengthen their midfield has seen their attention set squarely on Ajax's Frankie de Jong.

The Catalan club's board has shuffled through many names so far this summer, but De Jong is the one they appear to covet the most.

At just 21 years of age, Barcelona see a player with a very promising future, in addition to being one who would be very well received by the current Catalan side's squad.

The problem lies in the negotiations that they have to establish with Ajax.

The Dutch club does not appear interested in selling the player, as last week, Marc Overmars, Ajax's sports director, spoke with de Jong to tell him that the club wanted to keep him along with other young talent that they still have.

Ajax have already sold 19-year-old forward Justin Kluivert to Roma, and Overmars considers that one exit enough.

In spite of everything, Barcelona do not intend to give up on their pursuit. In the past few hours they have held meetings with the player's representatives to see what strategy they can follow to make Ajax decide to negotiate.

One of the options is to increase the offer they had originally planned. According to the newspaper Sport, Barcelona had come up with an offer of 40 million euros for the transfer, but they could go up to 50 million.

In the next few days, the arrivals of Clement Lenglet and Arthur could be finalized and that would already see an expenditure of 65 million euros for Barcelona.

As long as other players are not sold, it is dangerous to venture into larger operations. So far, they have only managed to get rid of Gerard Deulofeu whom they sold to Watford for 13 million euros.

Clubs know that Barcelona will need to sell more players, but as of now other operations have stopped.