Atletico Madrid joked with Barcelona about the alleged campaign against them in the Julian Alvarez transfer — made even smaller by the Lamine Yamal offer
Atletico Madrid used a funny ploy on social media to lambast Barcelona over its alleged smear campaign and pursuit of Julian Alvarez, including the joke trade for Lamine Yamal.
Atletico Madrid sparked laughter and tension on social media this Friday against their bitter rivals in La Liga, Barcelona. Atleti's joke went viral after news broke that Barcelona were reportedly determined to sign Argentinian forward Julian Alvarez from them.
Using their official social media, Atletico was happy and mocked the alleged collaboration between Barcelona and politicians in registering the players and hiring Alvarez. BBC columnist Guillem Balague himself claims that talks between Barcelona and Alvarez are at hand, although there is a strong possibility that Atleti will not accept the estimated €90m offer.
Atletico did not miss to announce it publicly: "We have already sent a fax to FC Barcelona for our transfer offer: 4 tickets to the Bad Bunny concert, a year of subscription to ABC, and a bag of watermelon seeds. We are waiting for the answer so we can 'announce'," they said to Lamine Yamal. The joke didn't end here — as for Pedri, the concert tickets were even raised to six; for Raphinha, they even agreed to a one-year loan with a swap to Tom Ford and Smith, a well-known gaffe by club president Enrique Cerezo when the two were mistaken for players.
<figure style="margin:2rem 0;overflow:hidden;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;background:#f9f9f9"><img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/1024/cpsprodpb/9e71/live/9bfd16c0-5b8c-11f1-992f-bf39afa11669.jpg" alt="Image" style="width:100%;height:auto;object-fit:contain" loading="lazy" /></figure>Atleti's strictly satirical posts reached over 55 million views. Although happy and apparently playful, the Madrid side has a more serious message in the end: "In the age of fake news, not everything you see is true, especially when it's about Barca," they insisted.
Atletico also directly denounced their non-stop smear campaign against one of their players, and even hit Barcelona over the alleged payment issue to the former vice-president of the referees' committee, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira. Barcelona emphasized that they are not violating any law in the ongoing investigation.
This is not the first clash between these two giants in the transfer saga: in 2019, Antoine Griezmann was also involved in transfer drama before returning to Atletico again. This year, the tension is resonating, especially as Alvarez has become a big name with 20 goals in all competitions since joining Atleti from Manchester City for £81.5m.
This episode proved that with the intensity of the rivalry, even jokes and banats stick to social media.
