Atletico Madrid aimed a mocking dig at La Liga rivals Barcelona over their “smear campaign” in pursuit of Julian Alvarez.
In a series of messages that became increasingly heated amid the transfer battle, Atletico accused Barcelona of using political favors to register players.
Chronicle NG reports that Barcelona have opened talks to sign the Argentina forward, with an agreement in place for the 26-year-old.
However, Atletico are likely to turn down the 90m euros (£77.9m). Barcelona are expected to offer—and so the Madrid club’s barrage of social media posts on Friday evening proved.
Firstly, they laid out their proposal for 18-year-old Spain star Lamine Yamal.
“We have sent a fax to FC 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 announcement,” they wrote.
More ‘approaches’ were created for other players, each with AI-generated photos of them wearing an Atletico shirt.
For Spain midfielder Pedri, externally, the concert offer was boosted to six seats for Sunday’s show at the club’s Riyadh Air Metropolitano Stadium, before bidding “loan for a season and in exchange we loan out Tom Ford and Smith with no option to buy” for Brazil winger Raphinha, externally.
By ‘Tom Ford and Smith,’ the club was referring to a gaffe made by Atletico president Enrique Cerezo earlier in the year when he named both as players for his side.
“An offer impossible to refuse,” they wrote.
The flood of posts occurred in just over an hour and soon went viral, reaching more than 55 million X account feeds.
The popularity was certainly fueled by surprise; it is extremely unusual for a club to make such humorous remarks against a competitor on a public forum.
Atleti concluded their statements with two more significant points.
“Remember, it took us just five minutes to create this fake post. We live in an era where reality can be altered. Don’t believe everything you see, especially if it’s related to Barca.”
In another post, the club added: “In recent months, we’ve been suffering a smear campaign against one of our players.
“Leaked information with ulterior motives, ‘fake news,’ constant disrespect, the culé version of the propaganda machine inventing little stories, calls before direct match-ups.
“But of course, it wouldn’t occur to us either to have the referees’ vice president on our payroll or to resort to political favors to register players. Respect and values.”
That is related to alleged payments made by Barcelona to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, the former vice-president of Spain’s referees committee. The investigation is ongoing, and Los Cules has denied any wrongdoing.
This isn’t the first time the two clubs have disagreed over a player.
In 2019, Barcelona was accused of disrespect by Atletico during their attempts to sign Antoine Griezmann.
The French forward moved to the Nou Camp but returned to Diego Simeone’s side two years later, originally on loan. The 35-year-old is expected to join Major League Soccer club Orlando City this summer.
Alvarez, who has 20 goals in all competitions this season, joined Atletico from Manchester City in 2024 for a fee of up to £81.5 million.
