Atletico Madrid have mocked Barcelona in a series of posts on X over their pursuit of Julian Alvarez.
The Argentina forward is being linked with a move away from the Spanish capital in the summer, with Fabrizio Romano posting on X on Friday morning: "BREAKING: Barcelona send first official proposal to Atlético Madrid for Julián Álvarez worth €100m.
"No add-ons, no players involved.
"Atlético, not happy about the situation over last 24h — but Julián has already asked to leave."
The club responded later in the day, saying: "HERE WE GO! We have sent a fax to @FCBarcelona_es with our transfer offer: 4 tickets for tomorrow's Bad Bunny concert, an annual subscription to ABC, and a bag of sunflower seeds. We eagerly await the response to prepare the 'announce'."
The post was accompanied by a generated image of Lamine Yamal in an at Atletico shirt, before doing similar with Raphinha.
Atleti then took further aim at their La Liga rivals, saying: "No, Atlético de Madrid would never do something like that. However, in recent months, we’ve been suffering a smear campaign against one of our players.
"Leaked information with ulterior motives, 'fake news,' constant disrespect, the culé version of the propaganda machine inventing little stories, calls before direct matchups...
"But of course, it wouldn’t occur to us either to have the referees’ vice president on our payroll or to resort to political favors to register players. RESPECT and VALUES.
The astonishing attack makes life much harder for Barca in their pursuit of Alvarez, but will be seen as a welcome boost in North London, with Arsenal also interested in Alvarez.
