The Julian Alvarez Atletico standoff has a new stage: the Metropolitano. Diego Simeone has named the Argentine in his squad to face Villarreal on Sunday evening, and that one line of team news matters more to Barca than anything that happens on the pitch in Madrid. According to Mundo Deportivo’s Joan Poqui, the Argentine walks back into a stadium where a section of the support has spent the week making its feelings clear — while the Blaugrana, in Poqui’s words, remain “a la expectativa”: waiting, watching, saying nothing.
Eight days of the window remain. What today actually tells us:
- Why his selection at all is a change of Atletico policy
- The banners, the boos and the meeting he could not get
- Miguel Angel Gil Marin’s “untransferable” line, and the Arsenal offer that preceded it
- Two Mundo Deportivo columnists, two different accounts of where Barca stand
- What Flick has actually said, and what the alternatives look like
What the Julian Alvarez Atletico squad call-up changes
Alvarez was not in Simeone’s squad for Atletico’s LaLiga opener against Malaga on Wednesday, a 2-0 win during which, per Mundo Deportivo, part of the crowd abused him in his absence. He did not go to the Metropolitano at all that night. Two days later, posters reading “Julian fuera” appeared around Atletico’s training complex at Majadahonda, alongside mocked-up road signs with his No 19 crossed out.
Naming him against a direct LaLiga rival is therefore a decision, not a formality. Simeone confirmed it on Saturday: the striker “will be in tomorrow’s squad and he’s better. He’s progressing at his own pace.” There is a scheduling logic that Barca Universal flagged this week — Atletico then face three straight away trips (Sevilla, Athletic, Real Sociedad) and do not play at home again until 16 September, well after the window shuts. If Alvarez is to face his own crowd as an Atletico player, it is today or not at all.
Mundo Deportivo’s assessment is blunt: his situation remains “muy delicada”, and Sunday afternoon may be a bruising experience.
“Untransferable” — and the offer that came first
The most important thing about this week is the order in which it happened. News emerged that Atletico were negotiating a sale of Alvarez to Arsenal, reported by sources described as very close to the club’s hierarchy. Only then did chief executive Miguel Angel Gil Marin break his silence to declare the forward untransferable and insist the club’s wish is to help him — the same intervention in which he said Atletico rejected a €100m offer and would reject €150m or €200m too, as we covered at the time.
Alvarez’s camp did not miss the sequence either. Mundo Deportivo report that the player flatly rejected the Arsenal proposal and has not moved from that position, and that he now believes Gil Marin has been untruthful a second time: in his reading, a player is not untransferable if the club will sell him to Arsenal. His agent, Fernando Hidalgo, made his own feelings public on Instagram — “never ask a liar why he lied” — a post Mundo Deportivo presume, but do not confirm, was aimed at Gil Marin.
The timeline matters too. Alvarez returned from holiday on 10 August for medical checks expecting to discuss what he says was a verbal agreement about his future. He could not speak to Simeone, who was off after the South Korea tour, and the board declined his requests for a meeting. He has kept training normally — though the images from Saturday’s session, Mundo Deportivo note, show a serious, head-down Alvarez in contrast to the mood of his team-mates.
Where Barca actually stand — two versions, same newspaper
This is where you deserve honesty rather than a headline. Mundo Deportivo published two opinion columns on Sunday morning that point in opposite directions, and neither is straight news reporting.
Version one: the file is closed
Lluis Canut writes that at a meeting of the club’s leadership on Saturday, chaired by Joan Laporta, Barca decided — “according to some versions” — to definitively shelve the Alvarez option. His explanation is financial rather than personal: every Blaugrana approach, he argues, has broken against the American investment fund Apollo, which controls Atletico economically and has no appetite for selling its most valuable footballing asset. Everything else — Gil Marin’s word, the reported friction between Mateu Alemany and Barca’s Deco and Echevarria — he reads as theatre.
In the same column he reports that Flick told that meeting he is convinced he can manage without a recognised No 9, pointing to the arrivals of Anthony Gordon and Karim Adeyemi alongside Raphinha, Lamine Yamal, Dani Olmo, Fermin Lopez and the emerging Hamza Abdelkarim, all built on a midfield transformed by Rodri’s arrival. Canut’s Plan B is not new: convince Inter to sell Lautaro Martinez.
Version two: Flick is waiting
A few pages away, Cristina Cubero writes almost the reverse — that Flick wants Alvarez and will wait, because the Argentine’s commitment “deserves respect”. She adds that the manager shares Deco’s view that Nicolo Tresoldi is promising, but that there are other names on the list and solutions already inside the squad. Her column is built around Hamza, the 18-year-old who grew up partly in Malaysia, has already been capped by Egypt, and has 2.4 million Instagram followers — one of them Carles Puyol.
Two columnists, one newsroom, no agreement. What both accept is that Barca have not signed a centre-forward, and are not the ones controlling the timing.
The obstacles that have not moved
Whichever version is closer to the truth, the structural problems are unchanged.
The selling club has closed the door in public. Gil Marin’s numbers were explicit and Simeone has backed his framing, saying people are “trying to create conflict”. Atletico’s veto, as Mundo Deportivo have reported this week, has narrowed from “not for sale to anyone” to something more specific: not for sale to Barcelona.
Plan B has closed too. Inter president Giuseppe Marotta told DAZN before the Monza game that Lautaro Martinez “represents the current history of Inter”, that “there simply aren’t the conditions in place for him to leave” and that it is “not even worth talking about” — as we reported on Saturday. Cristian Chivu said much the same 24 hours earlier. No offer has been lodged.
The alternatives are a list, not a deal. Serhou Guirassy, Folarin Balogun, Viktor Gyokeres and Tresoldi have all surfaced in reporting this past week — every one a name attached to a source rather than a negotiation. Deco has said publicly only that there will be a move at centre-forward before the deadline.
And the season has already started. Barca open their LaLiga campaign at Elche on Sunday night without a specialist striker in the squad. Flick’s press-conference answer was that of a man who has stopped pretending the question will go away: “I’m not worried that we haven’t signed a number 9 yet. I don’t like to talk about players from other teams. Deco and I talk every day.” On who leads the line: “We have many options within the team. Of course I know who will play. There might be a surprise tomorrow.”
What to watch next
The Metropolitano’s reaction. If Alvarez appears and the whistling is severe, it changes the internal politics of a club that has spent a fortnight insisting he is happy and staying. Gil Marin said he has “no doubt that Atletico is the right place in the world for Julian”. Sunday evening is the first live test of that.
A gesture from the player. Mundo Deportivo’s framing is precise: Barca are waiting for a “new gesture” from Alvarez. He has already refused Arsenal and made his unhappiness plain through his representative. What he has not done is force the issue in a way that leaves Atletico no room to hold the line.
Barca’s own budget. The club are operating under LaLiga’s 1:1 rule, a late centre-back is only in play if a significant sale goes through, and Alejandro Balde’s future is its own unresolved story. Money not spent on a striker does not automatically move elsewhere.
The bottom line
Nothing in the Julian Alvarez file was resolved overnight. What changed is that the player is back in the shop window, in an Atletico shirt, in front of a crowd that has turned on him — and Barca, eight days from the deadline, have no move to make and no obvious way to make one. If Canut is right, the club have already accepted that. If Cubero is right, Flick has not. Either way, the next move is out of Barca’s hands.
Reported by Joan Poqui, Lluis Canut, Cristina Cubero and Sergi Sole for Mundo Deportivo, with Simeone, Gil Marin and Marotta quotes as carried by Barca Universal and Barca Blaugranes. Transfer claims are attributed to their original outlets and are not club-confirmed; the two Mundo Deportivo columns cited are opinion pieces, not reporting.
