Barcelona will not abandon their pursuit of Paul Pogba despite Juventus rejecting an €80 million bid, international sporting director Ariedo Braida has said.
Barca sent a delegation including Braida and Albert Soler to Italy to try to negotiate a deal for the France midfielder, but Juve managing director Giuseppe Marotta announced this week that the offer was rejected, telling Gazzetta dello Sport: "I can affirm that Pogba will not be sold."
However, Braida, a former sporting director at AC Milan, said Barca intend to persist with their efforts to sign the 22-year-old.
He told Italian TV station Mediaset: "My dear friend Beppe Marotta of Juventus, whom I have a profound affection for, has officially rejected the proposal that I made for Paul Pogba, but we will not stop here.
"I will now return to Barcelona to follow the Blaugrana presidential election [on July 18] and then we will think about other signings."
Pogba, who has also been linked with Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid, is under contract at Juventus until 2019.
Barca presidential candidate Joan Laporta -- who has previously talked up his relationship with Pogba's agent, Mino Raiola -- told Cadena SER that the failed bid had embarrassed the club and said links with Atletico Madrid star Arda Turan were a means of drawing attention from the matter.
"After the Pogba mess, the Arda situation came up, to cover up the ridiculousness of Braida and Soler in Milan," Laporta said. "They went for the player and came back without him. Two gentleman go announcing they are going to sign him and they don't do it and that makes Barcelona look bad."
He added: "Raiola is the key to all this and that is the truth. He [Pogba] is a player whom everyone wants, not just Laporta. You can't say what you want and then not bring it. I like Bernardo Silva, the youngster from Monaco, who I have seen several times. I also like Marco Verratti, of PSG, or [Javier] Pastore, but we think the best would be to add Pogba.
"If we win [the presidential election], we will go to Turin to meet with his team and with Raiola."
On the Turan interest, he said: "The board shouldn't make any statements. He is a great player, I like him, but the board can't make these declarations and should wait until the 19th when there is a president. We don't want to force the issue, that's not it. Everyone wants to come to Barca.
"There are many factors from many people to analyse in order to make this type of investment. The board had decided on Tuesday that it wasn't going to make a decision on this case."
Laporta also repeated his complaints over the decision to sell Gerard Deulofeu to Everton before the election takes place.
"It seems wrong to me that they would transfer Deulofeu," he said. "What reason is there for that? They should have waited until there was a new president, because it seems to me that this is just an excuse to add €6 million to the bill of benefits for the club.
"That the board is party to this leaves them tarnished. Our proposal is not based on making choices that can be made later, and that is why nothing has blown up."