Julián Álvarez saga deepens as Atlético stance hardens and Barça stick at 100 million | OneFootball

Tension around Julián Álvarez’s future has spiked hours before the World Cup final, after Miguel Ángel Gil Marín publicly shut the door on the striker leaving Atlético.

SPORT reports that Álvarez is very unhappy with Atlético, believing the club is not honouring a commitment made only months ago. In February, Gil Marín told the player his exit would be facilitated if an offer arrived close to the figures Barcelona put forward early in the summer.

That assurance helped prompt the Argentina forward, while with the national team, to hint that fulfilling a dream excited him. Barcelona’s hierarchy welcomed it as the first pushback against Atlético’s refusal to negotiate.

Gil Marín then doubled down. He insisted Atlético was the right place for Julián and that he was the perfect centre forward for the club, a stance he said had been relayed to the player, his agent and Barça’s president.

Far from settling matters, those remarks angered the forward, who believes the current line contradicts the earlier commitment. Once the World Cup ends, he may speak again to press his wish to leave and to defend an exit he considers previously agreed.

Barça do not plan to trade public blows with Atlético. Joan Laporta, speaking in Barcelona, Dallas and New York, has stuck to a single 100 million euro bid, time limited, with no increases or public negotiations.

Barcelona’s sporting department view the next move as Atlético’s, and, if the stalemate continues, Álvarez may need to try to unlock the operation himself.

Source: El Periódico Mediterráneo