Barcelona know they will struggle to land Ajax’s Matthijs de Ligt in January and have decided to pursue a short-term deal for a veteran in order to fix their centre-back crisis, according to reports.

Gerard Pique and Clement Lenglet are likely to be the La Liga champions’ only options in that area for the foreseeable future after Samuel Umtiti and Thomas Vermaelen suffered injuries.

Mundo Deportivo have stated that a technical summit was held between head coach Ernesto Valverde and sports manager Pep Segura on Thursday. In it, they discussed this problem and the difficulty of landing De Ligt in the immediate future to solve it.

In the previous decade, Barca successfully inked six-month deals with experienced midfielders Edgar Davids and Demetrio Albertini when in a similar situation. Such an approach could be repeated in the January transfer market for a defender.