Barcelona tried to sign Saul Niguez last summer, says Atletico CEO

Atletico Madrid CEO Gil Marin has revealed that Barcelona tried to sign Saul Niguez last summer but that a deal fell through for financial reasons.

Apparently the Catalan giants were set to pay his release clause only to discover that it had almost doubled after the midfielder signed a new deal.

“Bartomeu called me this summer to tell me that they needed a player with the characteristics of Saul and that they intended to pay the clause," he said.

"What they didn’t not know is that three days before he had signed the new contract and the clause went up from €80 to €150 million.”

Source | Onda Cero

As we all know last summer was pretty chaotic from a Barcelona point of view with the club also targeting midfielders Marco Verratti, Jean-Michael Seri and Philippe Coutinho but ending up with Paulinho.