Atletico Madrid have fired back at Barcelona after the La Liga champions tried to sign Julian Alvarez.
It was reported on Friday that Barca had submitted a €100million bid to land Alvarez, the former Manchester City striker, from rivals Atletico.
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.
HERE WE GO! Hemos enviado un fax al @FCBarcelona_es con nuestra oferta de traspaso: 4 entradas para el concierto de Bad Bunny de mañana, una suscripción anual al ABC y una bolsa de pipas. Esperamos ansiosos la respuesta para preparar el ‘announce’. pic.twitter.com/e0J7mPljHa
— Atlético de Madrid (@Atleti) May 29, 2026
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.”
