Barcelona’s president put the club’s position on the record, and Atlético Madrid answered it inside a few hours. The Julian Alvarez Barcelona offer is still on the table, Joan Laporta told the club’s own media on Wednesday, and he would like Atlético to accept it. By the afternoon an Atlético source had told Marca, in quotes carried by Barça Blaugranes, that there is “a 0% chance of selling him to Barça”.
The Spanish window shuts at 00:00 on Tuesday 1 September, under five days away. Wednesday brought the clearest public exchange yet between the two boardrooms.
What you’ll find in this piece:
- Laporta’s account of the bid, the personal call to Miguel Ángel Gil Marín, and why Barça pressed pause
- Atlético’s reply — “dignity”, “lies and half-truths”, and that 0% line
- The reported numbers: €150m, a June deadline and a €100m package spread over six years
- Why Álvarez was missing from training on Wednesday, and the two versions of it
- What Marca say the player is beginning to accept, and what Hansi Flick said
The Julian Alvarez Barcelona offer: Laporta’s version
Laporta spoke to Barça’s official media on Wednesday, a day after his summit with Deco and Flick at the Ciutat Esportiva. He respected the other club, then asked it to sell.
“We are very interested in the player and we would like our offer to be accepted,” he said, in the translation carried by Barça Blaugranes. “We do this with all due respect to Atlético, and if they are in a position to sell the player on the market, we are prepared to buy him in accordance with the offer we made.”
Mundo Deportivo carried the longer version, and it is unusually detailed. Laporta described the bid as “important, very important, because on top of that our coach has a genuine interest in the player”, and said he ratified it himself by telephone to Miguel Ángel Gil Marín, Atlético’s chief executive: “I ratified this offer by phone in a personal call to Miguel Ángel Gil, to confirm to him that we want the player.”
Gil Marín’s answer, per Laporta’s retelling, was that Atlético had no intention of selling because they had no alternative lined up to replace him. Laporta says he replied: “When you have an alternative, if it’s inside this summer window, we’re there.”
At that point Barça shelved it. “I spoke to Deco and said: look, leave it on stand by, because it seems that with no alternative they won’t sell,” Laporta told MD. What kept it alive, he said, was information reaching the club that Atlético were talking to other clubs about a possible sale. “That information creates a situation for us where yes, we do maintain the offer, and we would like them to sell him to us, and not to another club.”
The numbers behind it
The most granular account of the money comes from Barça Universal, relaying Tala Radio via FCB World — a report, not a set of confirmed terms.
On that account it began with Álvarez asking for improved terms. Atlético were willing to discuss the salary; the conversation changed direction when the forward told them he wanted to leave for sporting reasons. Atlético refused, told him he would keep a leading role if he stayed, and gave him one route out: bring an offer worth €150 million before 20 June.
The only proposal that arrived before that date, per the same report, was Barcelona’s — around €90 million plus €10 million in add-ons, a €100 million package structured across six years and passed to Atlético through an intermediary. Barça Universal’s conclusion is blunt: nowhere near the conditions Atlético had set, and from that moment the Madrid club treated the case as closed for the summer.
Atlético’s reply: a 0% chance, and a question of dignity
The response came not as a formal statement but as quotes given to Marca by a club source, relayed in English by Barça Blaugranes. The tone is the story.
“The player is being portrayed as a victim, but the only victims in the Julián case are us,” the source said. “They’ve hurt us both financially and socially. There’s a 0% chance of selling him to Barça.” Atlético also said, per the same report, that “this situation isn’t about money, it’s about dignity”, and claimed that “a campaign has been created with many lies and half-truths. The only one paying the price for this is Atlético.”
Read alongside the reported €150m demand, it is coherent. Atlético are not saying no price exists; they are saying no price exists for Barcelona. That is a distinction Barça cannot buy their way past in the days that are left.
The legal front has hardened too. Everything Barça — writing from an openly pro-Barça position, and worth weighing accordingly — report that Atlético have decided to submit further evidence to FIFA and the RFEF in support of their complaints against the Catalans, believing Barcelona’s offers and the noise around the player’s entourage have destabilised him. Our earlier piece on Gil Marín’s statement shutting the door on a sale set out where that position started six days ago.
Wednesday’s absence, and the two versions of it
Álvarez was missing from Wednesday’s Atlético session at the Cerro del Espino in Majadahonda, and the obvious interpretation — an act of rebellion to force his exit — spread fastest.
Sources close to the player told Mundo Deportivo flatly that it was nothing of the kind. They insisted the Argentine would never lie about feeling unwell, that the absence was an indisposition after a bad night — which is what Atlético themselves said — and that missing the session had been agreed with the club’s medical staff, who advised him not to train. Everything Barça carried the club’s illness line too, while their own headline framed it as a refusal to train.
Two versions, one absence, no way to settle it from outside. What is not in dispute is the atmosphere: Álvarez came on as a substitute against Villarreal on Sunday and was whistled by his own supporters at the Metropolitano.
The counter-argument: Barça may already have lost this
For all Laporta’s confidence, the strongest reporting of the day pointed the other way. Barça Universal, relaying Marca, say Álvarez is beginning to accept that Arsenal — whose proposal he previously rejected — may be his only route out of Madrid.
The same report says Atlético insist they will keep him and win back his loyalty, but on conditions: that he cuts ties with his agent Fernando Hidalgo and apologises to the club. It also notes that Álvarez has been seen more often with his second agent, Sergio, while Hidalgo — whose “never ask a liar why he lied” broadside at Atlético ran five days ago — has receded into the background, though the same report says he continues to push for the Barcelona move.
Barcelona, per that account, are beginning to give up hope while maintaining that it is Álvarez or nobody. If that is accurate, Wednesday’s intervention from the president looks less like momentum than like a last public push.
What Flick said, and what it tells you
Flick took the same question at Wednesday’s press conference, ahead of the rearranged Matchday 1 against Athletic Club, and answered it in one sentence. “The president delivered a clear message yesterday. And Deco and I are in total agreement with it,” he said, per Mundo Deportivo. MD date that summit to Tuesday, so Flick’s “yesterday” is Tuesday — his answer predates Laporta’s club-media remarks above.
Pressed a second time, he moved off the player and onto the squad. “I don’t want to talk about Julián. Only the club’s situation matters to me. We’ve made very good signings in this window and our objective is clear, but the club also has to think about the future… I have total confidence in the quality we have in the team now.” He then praised the club and Deco for building with the next three, four or five years in view.
That is a manager declining to negotiate in public while making the case for the squad he has. Gordon, Adeyemi, Bisiwu, Cancelo and Rodri have all arrived this summer; a No. 9 has not.
Where this ends
Three things can still happen before 00:00 on Tuesday. Atlético can move off “0%”, which every reported line from Madrid says they will not. Álvarez can accept Arsenal, which Marca say he is edging towards. Or nothing happens, and a World Cup winner who has asked to leave starts the season at a club whose supporters whistled him on Sunday.
Barça’s public position costs them nothing to maintain. Whether it achieves anything is Atlético’s decision, and they have now given their answer in the plainest language of the summer. For the background, read our account of the emergency Atlético board meeting and the €150m figure at the centre of the standoff, published on Monday.
