Valencia’s sporting director, Miguel Angel Corona, has claimed that Atletico Madrid tried to cancel their imminent transfer of Conor Gallagher to pursue a deal for Javi Guerra.
Gallagher has travelled to Spain to undergo a medical with Atletico after the Rojiblancos agreed a £33.7m fee with Chelsea for the England international.
The 24-year-old is set to sign for Atletico after entering the final 12 months of his deal at Chelsea, though Valencia have claimed that their divisional rivals made an attempt to withdraw from the deal.
Atletico have been negotiating with Valencia over a separate deal for Javi Guerra, with a €25m agreement reached for the 21-year-old. However, Atletico are able to afford just one midfielder and Valencia – unaware the two deals were linked – imposed a deadline for Atleti to complete the Guerra transfer.
Corona has now revealed that Atletico made an unsuccessful attempt to ‘get out’ of the Gallagher transfer in favour of signings Guerra, with Valencia eventually withdrawing their end of the agreement after their deadline was not met. The Athletic have reported that Chelsea are ‘unaware’ of any attempt from Ateltico to cancel the deal.
“There is a maximum agreement (between clubs) on Sunday, plus it was between the president of Valencia and the maximum shareholder of Atletico Madrid,” Corona said.
“On Monday, the documentation is developed and, in the same way, it goes in parallel with the player, who is advancing in this negotiation and almost closes the agreement.
“On Wednesday morning, due to the delay in the return of Atletico’s documents and some comments made, a specific question was asked to Atletico’s owner, about the situation, why the delay, and the answer was that they were trying to get out of the Chelsea operation and that, if they don’t succeed, they can’t face the Javi Guerra operation.
“It was the first news that we and Javi had about it, that the operations were linked, and therefore we (Valencia) got out of it because it was not a condition that was discussed on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, when there were constant WhatsApps, emails, calls, comments on clauses…. We were not informed of anything regarding the link between the two and we got out of it to protect ourselves.”
