Atletico Madrid have confirmed they turned down big-money bids for Sergio Aguero and Diego Forlan from Chelsea and Real Madrid, respectively, last summer.
Atletico have endured a poor start to the Liga season and they have now revealed they were unable to strengthen their squad after turning down bids for their key players.
The club’s delegate general Miguel Angel Gil Marin has revealed Atletico received bids totalling €86million for the duo from Chelsea and Real Madrid.
“There were two bids in the summer,” Gil Marin told Marca. “Chelsea wanted Aguero and Real Madrid wanted Diego Forlan.
“Chelsea offered €45m plus €5m in bonuses for Aguero and Real Madrid offered €36m for Forlan.
“Madrid’s president [Florentino Perez] told us he would not meet Forlan’s buy-out clause because he did not want a public confrontation between the club.
“They hoped we would accept their first offer and in a deal that would have included us having the pick of a number of players, one of whom was Alvaro Negredo.”
Gil Marin was asked if Atletico will they be forced to listen to offers in the summer if they were not in next season’s Champions League.
“It will not be a must, but it is obvious that there are cycles with teams and with players,” he replied.
“If any player wants to look for a new challenge then Atletico would evaluate it.
“The problem in the summer was that we chose not to sell five players; Aguero, Forlan, Simao, Paulo Assuncao and Tomas Ujfalusi.
“We then told the sporting director that he could buy players that we needed with money raised from the sale of other players, but the market was at a standstill and we could not sell.”
Atletico have won just one game in their opening 10 matches of the season, in all competitions, and replaced coach Abel Resino with Quique Sanchez Flores last week.
“If we have to we’ll correct things in the winter transfer market.”
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