Barcelona DoF Deco gives indignant response over Nico Williams saga – ‘Bilbao are no example for anyone’ | OneFootball

Barcelona Director of Football Deco has fired off an irritated account of the Nico Williams transfer saga, placing the blame for the failure of the deal at the feet of his agent Felix Tainta. The story dominated Spanish headlines for three weeks, for a second consecutive summer, but saw Barcelona end up without the Basque winger.

The story that emerged from various sources was that Williams’ agent demanded guarantees over his registration, something Barcelona have struggled with over recent years. Unable or unwilling to provide said guarantees, Tainta pulled the plug on a deal, and Williams signed an extension until 2035 with Los Leones.

‘If a great player like Nico suggests a move, we’ll talk’ – Deco

During an interview with MD, Deco was asked why the club considered his signing, having been turned down by the 22-year-old the previous year. The Blaugrana hierarchy had dismissed the idea of a pursuit of Williams this summer earlier in the year.

“There’s no change. When we were focused on Luis Diaz, we saw it as very difficult. With Rashford, United only wanted to sell him, and we were looking for solutions. Nico wasn’t the exact profile we wanted, but he can play on the left and the right. And Ferran was becoming a ‘9’, and you take him out of the equation on the wings. If you bring in Nico, you have a right and a left wing, but not so much the ‘9’ profile.”

“If a great player like Nico suggests a move, when the agent looks for us, we’ll talk, and that’s how it was. Football is like that; the player, for whatever reason, didn’t want the conditions that were proposed. The agent has his interests, and we don’t know how things are going, but there’s no controversy. It’s a very easy matter. He gives you a right and a left wing, he doesn’t give you the ‘9’ quality, but if you don’t have the other solutions, it would suit us because he’s a great player and could give you two of the three positions.”

‘It wasn’t about registration guarantees’

Many wondered why Barcelona pursued Williams without certainty they would be able to register him, and certainly  in Spain, the narrative has been that it was something of an embarassing episode for the Catalan giants. Yet Deco said that the deal collapsed due to Barcelona refusing to cave to fresh demands, rather than registration issues, something President Joan Laporta has also stated.

“There’s no failure, we simply set the club’s conditions, then we have to put the negotiations on paper, into contracts, and we said we wouldn’t accept the conditions they set us because no player is going to impose any restrictions on us, and in the end, that’s it. We gave them a deadline to respond, but they didn’t respond; they went their way, and we went ours.”

Image via Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images

“It’s not a matter of registration guarantees; it’s very simple. It’s just that if you’re going to negotiate, tell me everything you need and what you want, and don’t change it afterward. That’s it. And I won’t say any more about this topic; it’s been talked about too much, too much nonsense, even in Bilbao.”

‘Bilbao are no example for anyone’ – Deco fires pointed reponse to Athletic Club

There was plenty of bad feeling from the Basque capital directed towards their Catalan counterparts, but Deco’s view was that their ire should be directed towards Tainta rather than Barcelona.

“I don’t want to get into issues that aren’t my own. I’m dedicated to players, to the day-to-day management of the club, but I don’t think Bilbao is an example in this regard. We haven’t sought out their player, we haven’t gone after their player. They have to worry about the agent, who has come to Barca several times to offer the player.”

Image via Marca

“It’s not a club issue. If one of our players gives his agent permission to talk to other teams, we can’t get angry at the others about it. We’re moving on. He’s a Bilbao player. It’s a very simple situation. The agent sought us out, he tried to get us. It didn’t work out, and we must move on with other, more important issues.”

“Just to be clear, we didn’t seek out Nico, it was the agent who sought us out. And if the negotiations between Luis Diaz and Rashford were a bit complicated, we had to find solutions. But the Nico deal didn’t work out, and that’s it, no problem.”

Barcelona’s ongoing registration issues

Nevertheless, Barcelona and Deco will struggle to change the narrative on their registration struggles until they make a big signing. With the exception of the addition of Dani Olmo (€55m), Joan Garcia (€25m) has been their most expensive signing since the heavy spending during the infamous ‘economic levers’ summer. Olmo was only registered due to La Liga’s emergency injury rule, and then a court order, while Garcia required the emergency injury rule and a board guarantee to be registered.