Atletico mock Barca's Alvarez move with joke Lamine Yamal bid

Bad Bunny tickets, an ABC subscription and a bag of sunflower seeds.

In exchange? How about Lamine Yamal.

Atletico Madrid aimed a tongue-in-cheek dig at La Liga rivals Barcelona over their "smear campaign" in pursuit of Julian Alvarez.

According to BBC Sport columnist Guillem Balague, Barca have opened talks to sign the Argentina forward, with an agreement in place for the 26-year-old.

But, as reported on Thursday, Atletico are likely to turn down the 90m euros (£77.9m) Barca are expected to offer - and so the Madrid club's barrage of social media posts on Friday evening proved.

First, they laid out their proposal for 18-year-old Spain star Lamine Yamal.

"We have sent a fax to FC Barcelona 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'," they wrote, external.

More 'approaches' were made for other players too - all featuring AI-generated images of them in an Atleti shirt.

For Spain midfielder Pedri, external, the concert offering was increased to six tickets for Sunday's gig at the club's Riyadh Air Metropolitano Stadium, before bidding "loan for a season and in exchange we loan out Tom Ford and Smith with no option to buy" for Brazil winger Raphinha, external.

By 'Tom Ford and Smith', the club were referring to a gaffe made by Atleti president Enrique Cerezo earlier in the year when he named both as players for his side.

"An offer impossible to refuse," they wrote.

The flurry of posts came in just over an hour and quickly went viral, going into more than 55 million X account feeds.

The popularity was undoubtedly driven by the surprise - it is highly unusual for a club to make such satirical comments about a rival on a public forum.

Atleti finished their remarks with two further, more serious, points.

"Remember, it took us just five minutes to create this fake post. We live in an era where reality can be altered. Don't believe everything you see, especially if it's related to Barca."

In a further post, the club added: "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 match-ups.

"But of course, it wouldn't occur to us either to have the referees' vice-president on our payroll or to resort to political favours to register players. RESPECT and VALUES."

That referred to alleged payments Barcelona made to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, the former vice-president of Spain's referees' committee. That investigation is ongoing and Los Cules have denied any wrongdoing.

It is not the first time the two clubs have clashed over a player.

In 2019, Barca were accused of disrespect by Atleti in their efforts to sign Antoine Griezmann.

The French forward did move to the Nou Camp but rejoined Diego Simeone's side - initially on loan - two years later. The 35-year-old is set to join Major League Soccer side Orlando City this summer.

Alvarez, who has scored 20 goals in all competitions this season, joined Atleti in 2024 from Manchester City in a deal worth up to £81.5m.