Atletico Madrid taunt Barcelona with bizarre social media posts after Julian Alvarez transfer bid

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Evening Standard

·29 Mei 2026

Atletico Madrid taunt Barcelona with bizarre social media posts after Julian Alvarez transfer bid

La Liga champions submitted an offer for Atleti’s star striker

It was reported on Friday that Barca had submitted a €100million bid to land Alvarez, the former Manchester City striker, from rivals Atletico.

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Hansi Flick’s side have been heavily-linked with a move for the Argentine, who has scored 18 goals in 35 games in all competitions this term.

Standard Sport understands that the 26-year-old is also on Arsenal’s radar.

Instead of outright reject the offer behind closed doors, Atleti went public with their response.

On their official X account, the club posted a message on Friday afternoon, reading: “In a few minutes, we will publish a statement about a relevant matter that is generating numerous pieces of disinformation.”

What followed was truly bizarre, with Atleti uploading a mock-up of Lamine Yamal, the Barcelona winger, wearing an Atletico shirt, in the style of transfer guru Fabrizio Romano’s ‘here we go’ posts.

The caption read: “HERE WE GO! We have sent a fax to Barcelona with our transfer offer: 4 tickets for tomorrow's Bad Bunny concert, an annual subscription to ABC, and a bag of sunflower seeds. We eagerly await the response to prepare the 'announce[ment]'.”

Two more followed after that, with photoshopped images of Barca stars Pedri and Raphinha sporting Atletico colours, in the same Romano-style post.

“HERE WE GO!” read the second post, about Pedri. “For this second offer we've had a problem, we've run out of tickets for tomorrow's concert, so we improve the previous proposal with 6 for the one on Sunday.”

On their Raphinha post, Atleti wrote: “HERE WE GO! And to complete the 3x1, we've gotten all carried away and we're going to throw the little house out the window: the player arrives on loan for a season and in exchange we loan out Tom Ford and Smith with no option to buy. An offer impossible to refuse.”

A parting blow was posted an hour and a half on from the first tweet, simply saying: “Finally, we want to take this opportunity to categorically deny that we have made an offer to the sporting director of FC Barcelona to join our scouting team in the Brazilian market.”