Pepe Reina To Decide Future After Spain Are Done In The World Cup

Pepe Reina is a man without a home. His loan with Napoli is soon coming to an end, and after a bitter breakup last summer, he's not welcome back at Liverpool, especially not after all the potshots he lobbed at Brendan Rodgers over the course of the season.

There is some interest in Napoli in the area of retaining Reina, but his high wages make that a difficult proposition, especially with Rafael Cabral standing as the club's future in goal. He's flirted with Barcelona on a number of occasions over the last year, but with their signing of Marc-Andre ter Stegen, they're now indicating they don't want to make another significant investment at the position.

For now, though, Reina isn't letting any of that bother him, telling sports radio station Cadena SER in Spain that right he is "just thinking about the national team. With regards to a new club, first I’ll have to talk with Liverpool." He went on to mention ter Stegen's signing meaning that he likely wouldn't be going home to Barcelona, and said that there had been no talks with Atletico Madrid, who are looking for a plan B in case they can't loan Thibaut Courtois from Chelsea for a fourth straight season.

What he very pointedly did not mention, however, was anything to do with Napoli, other than talking about last season and thanking the club for the way he was treated there. There's been several reports over the last few weeks that Reina doesn't want to take a paycut, and that the club doesn't want to pay his, again, very high wages in full. If talks have broken down, that could be all she wrote for Reina at Napoli, but also leaves him short on potential destinations.

Aurelio De Laurentiis has indicated recently that the club might be willing to break its wage structure on one player this summer, but doing it for an aging and declining goalkeeper wouldn't make much sense, especially when one of Rafael's quality is kicking around. Instead, the club seems to prefer the idea of spending that money elsewhere, potentially on the likes of Javier Mascherano, who continues to be linked to Napoli in what's becoming the longest-running comedy show in the Italian transfer rumor show.

Despite Reina's seeming optimism that this won't take long to resolve once the World Cup is done, it seems more likely that it will take some time before all this drama is done. In the meantime, we're probably about a week from "Reina doesn't want to go back to Napoli" stories as fallout from this and a whole slew of goalkeeper links after that, so get ready for the ride.