"Anything can happen in football," said Atletico Madrid president Enrique Cerezo. Even Barcelona followed up on their decision to let a striker go to Atletico Madrid for free, paying a part of his salary and helping them win the league… well, to a striker Letting Atletico Madrid go for free, paying a part of his salary and helping them win the league.
OK, so Atlético can't win the league next season, and they can't even make a deal - in fact, it looks too difficult right now - but FC Barcelona are really looking to allow Antoine Griezmann to go this summer. Talking about them. Back to Wanda Metropolitano and for nothing. And were doing so two years after paying €125m for him, which in turn publicly turned them down a year later.
Not only allowing him to go back, but in fact: forcing him.
On Monday afternoon, Barcelona began discussions about signing a swap deal for midfielder Saul Niguez - although officially those would be two separate deals. This cannot happen. Barcelona do not want to cover any of Griezmann's salary, which is understood to be in the region of €20m. Atlético do not want the deal to cost them, and are informed that they are not so upset: they can walk away at any time, leaving him stuck.
Which could certainly be a strategy. It probably is. But this is where it comes.
That Barcelona have become so desperate in such dire financial circumstances, that they are trying to force Griezmann to bring him in the door, now know that it is almost impossible for them to keep him and Lionel Messi.
Whatever Griezmann has done, what he has done and still can be, there are no queues of clubs outside, all desperate to get him, huge cash rushes at Barcelona.
That Atletico stands alone, ready to turn Barcelona's arm or walk away.
And that Griezmann will happily go back. Like the others before him, by chance. It's funny how it goes.
Well, like happiness. And it's not like the choice will be his alone. Not that Griezmann wants to leave Barcelona for Atletico; It is that if he has to leave Barcelona, Atlético is an attractive option. It is a club he knows and a manager (Diego Simeone) who supports him; Even fitness coach Prof. Ortega, who prefers to freely watch his players sweat and vomit, doesn't intimidate them. In fact, the way things have turned over the years, he may welcome that work.
But Griezmann didn't look for this solution, Barcelona did. If it really is the solution.
For all the doubts about Griezmann over the years at Camp Nou—that lingering feeling that he never quite fit in, that it was never his place, that in truth he probably shouldn't have come in the first place. Was and he spends that much - Barcelona are so eager to pursue him that it's not so much football as financial.
Right now, they can't afford to pay their players: there's savings to be made, the sale is safe. Griezmann may not be the highest earner at the club or in the top three, but his departure will cut his salary bill by around €20m. Equally important, there is still around €80m to be amortized on his contract. His departure will help ease some of that financial pressure and at a time - and we say it again - they can't afford to pay their players and the league won't even let them sign up.
With a team high on pay and low on willingness to depart, Griezmann is one of the few players he could transfer. And yet he doesn't have his own choice of clubs, even in times when it seems like he'll come for free. Is there seriously no one else out there who sees what a deal this could be?
It is curious. When he joined Barcelona two years ago, there may have been only one attacking player in the world who did. There was a reason his transfer fee was €125m, there was a reason Barcelona were ready to go back to him, even though they had rejected him a year earlier - live on television. The problem was that a player was going to be on the same team as him.
Griezmann - and it's also worth saying - has not failed at Barcelona. He has played quite well and has scored some important goals – a significant number of goals too (35 in 99 games). Ask the people in the club privately, and most of all they speak well of her. And yet it is not enough; His arrival was much higher than he expected, and something just wasn't quite right. Add to this a financial crisis and structural dysfunction, and now there are doubts. Even a situation in which Griezmann is not in control of his fate.
He knows now that Barcelona are trying to oust him, that they have begun a process that they hope can secure his short-lived future. Because, make no mistake, that's the trend here. This is one in which he, and Atletico, hope they may be able to secure their past and their future as well - aware that while Barcelona are pushing for their departure, to get rid of Desperate, they have the upper hand, and the time is on their side. There's no guarantee that this will happen: it's a complicated deal, a deal just out of reach.
But there is also an opportunity.
Big money doesn't always mean success; Barcelona knows this best. It was said that Philippe Coutinho was there, but he won the Champions League with Bayern Munich. Luis Suárez was eliminated, but he won the league. "Madness," Messi called it. Now Griezmann can return once again. Not everyone will welcome him, not after what happened, but at Atletico, they know he can play. They saw it then and now... well, now, anything can happen in football.