Man, i would not like to get my hopes up, but it's hard to not drool over the possibility of seeing Kante cover the whole damn midfield and letting Messi focusing solely on attack. With Kante we could even afford to play 4-2-3-1, cause Kante would cover enough ground for 2 midfielders anyway, and we could then fit all four of Coutinho-Messi-Dembele and Suarez into the lineup for sure, and we know it's Valverde's favourite formation, so we might be playing that in any case sooner than later. But then again 4-3-3 would be pretty spectacular too, adding a powerhouse like Kante would totally rejuvenate our slow, lazy and aging midfield, exactly what we need. He would also relieve so much pressure on Busquets, and to have a creative gem like Arthur or sometimes Coutinho (if Suarez played in front with Messi and Dembele) alongside them in a 3-man midfield would be stupendously good. Now this is the kind of players we should be after (Kante, Eriksen, Hazard, Mbappe?), we are freaking Barca, not Arsenal or Inter, if we buy, we should only be looking at the elite group of players, so i'm gonna be really disappointed and gutted if it turns out that not Willian was a smokescreen for Kante, but that like Kante and Hazard are the actual smokescreen to blow our money on Willian and Rabiot, which is still much more likely with this Board.
I'm even willing to go this far and say if we somehow manage to get Kante AND include Gomes into the deal, i'm never criticizing this Board again, but it'll never happen, this Board has shown too many times they're perfectly happy with first trying for the big star, who we really need, and then getting a NO, and settling for his much more mediocre teammate, while still paying just 20 or 30M less that they would have to for the star, if they actually stick with buying him. So if it's a NO for Kante, who we could probably get for like 100M+Gomes, it's gonna be 80M for Willian. It's the same fear i have with Rabiot and Verratti, who we were chasing in recent years, with P$G.