Gerard Pique has revealed that Barcelona players were willing to alter their contracts to help the club sign Neymar over the summer.

The Brazilian was heavily linked with a return to the Camp Nou throughout the off-season, just two years after joining PSG in a world record €222 million move.

Barca defender Pique told Spanish radio station Cadena Ser that he and his team-mates were willing to adjust their earnings structure in order to help the La Liga champions fund a bid for Neymar.

‘We didn’t stump up money,’ he said, as reported by AS.

‘What we said to the president was whether we could change our contracts because we knew there was a Financial Fair Play issue… so we said to the president, rather than earn something in year one, we could earn it in year two or three or four.

‘At the end of the day we want to go along with what the club is doing and if we can help the club, in this case avoiding a financial fair problem, we’ve got no problem in doing that.

‘Rather than reducing our salary it was about finding a formula so that if the club wanted to sign Ney they could. At the time they thought it was a good idea, but then other problems cropped up’.

Pique hasn’t ruled out the possibility of Neymar coming back to Catalonia in the future, despite the difficulties of finding an agreement with PSG last summer.

‘In football anything can happen and every year just makes that clearer,’ he said.

‘We told Neymar, ‘you’re going to a golden prison’. But in football things can happen and you find the door open.’