Siempre Igual

Change of topic. How long were Barca furious about Neymar? What hurt me the most was the way it happened. We were all on tour talking with him and his father, and they were not transparent. No? If he came to us and said, I want to go, like Cesc, Pedro, Alexis, Mascherano did, we would have reached an agreement. What you can’t do is rock the boat. Did he take the piss? He played cat and mouse with us. It arrived at a point where we saw where things were going so we told him we would not pay his contract renewal fee. You said you were 200 per cent sure Neymar would not leave… He told us nothing. If he had done, PSG would have been able to buy him for less money and it would have cost us less to sign too. What Neymar’s behaviour created was the market inflation. We would have saved a lot of money and a lot of media noise.

Do you think he did all this to get his bonus? I’m convinced, for that I’m annoyed. Now we will go to court and the judge will decide.

Why do you think Neymar acted like this? Neymar saw he would never be No 1 while Messi was at Barcelona. And evidently, there will only be one Messi. He realised to be No 1 in the world he would have to leave Barca, and it’s fair enough for him to think like that.

Were the club panicked when Neymar left? It was a little earthquake, because the trident was gone, and Valverde, who had just arrived, would be left without him. But everyone did a great job, we didn’t lose our nerve or go mad.

What team was left?

“Milan is a football freak. The number of the players he know, jerseys and all the equipment … everything. It reminds me of when I was little. He lives football with passion and he spends 90 minutes hooked. I am proud that my son likes football the same way as me. He mostly asks me why we lost a game. He doesn’t understand a Barça loss, something that new generations think happens a little. He also questions a lot of the rules of the game such as a penalty, fouls or corners.”