"The agreement with Barca has nothing to do with Griezmann"

The Atletico Madrid president, Enrique Cerezo, made surprising comments this Tuesday in which he denied that Barca's payment to Atletico had anything to do with Barca's negotiations with Griezmann before his buyout clause dropped. 

"The Antoine issue was sealed with the ridiculous 300 euro fine from the Federation. I'm not going to talk about money, but it has nothing to do with Griezmann. We have that same agreement of respect with many other Spanish teams," the Atletico head explained. 

Cerezo, who talked to 'Radio Marca', before the match with Bayer Leverkusen, also calmed the fans and said that Atletico would win a title in 2019-20: "I'm telling them to be calm and they will see that this year we will win something."

The Atletico president defended Simeone again: "Every coach has his style and every one trains how they consider right. We like the work our coach is doing with our players."

"We are delighted with him. Cholo is the best coach there is right now in the world. We agree with him on everything he does and for us he is the one who can best coach the players we have," he concluded.

'El Mundo' said that Barcelona had paid 15 million euros to keep Atletico silent on the issue of Antoine Griezmann's signing. Also Barca have apparently been given an advantage when it comes to signing up to five Atletico players in the future. Cerezo, has come out to deny this.