Barcelona chief rips into ‘dishonest’ Neymar
Neymar left Barca in August when Paris Saint-Germain paid his release clause, making him the world's most expensive player at €222 million.
As a knock-on effect, the Catalan side will end up spending €300m on Ousmane Dembele and Philippe Coutinho if all the add-ons are fulfilled, while the cost of players around Europe has spiralled.
Mestre says the price of players could have been contained, at least for now, if Neymar had been honest with the club rather than playing "cat and mouse."
"What hurt me the most was the way it happened," he told Diario Sport. "We were all on tour talking with him and his father, and they were not transparent.
"If he came to us and said, I want to go, like Cesc [Fabregas], Pedro [Rodriguez], Alexis [Sanchez] and [Javier] Mascherano, we would have reached an agreement.
"What you can't do is rock the boat. He played cat and mouse with us. He told us nothing. If he had done, PSG would have been able to buy him for less money and it would have cost us less to sign [replacements], too.
"What Neymar's behaviour created was the market inflation. We would have saved a lot of money and a lot of media noise."