Athletic Club’s extreme measures to stop Barcelona from signing Nico Williams – report | OneFootball

It is no secret that Barcelona were strongly interested in signing Nico Williams from Athletic Club this summer.

At one point, a transfer looked only a matter of time but eventually, the 22-year-old returned to training with the Basque club and has since seemingly committed to continuing with them this season.

Barcelona, for their part, had the funds ready to activate his €58 million release clause and were proposing a five-year contract offer as well. But ultimately Athletic Club managed to convince Nico to continue.

Athletic Club threatened action against Barcelona

Now, a report from El Correo (h/t SPORT) has shed light on the lengths to which Athletic Club went to ensure that Barcelona did not sign Nico Williams.

The report explains that the president of the Basque club, Jon Uriarte, spoke directly to the president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas, to warn him that if Barça paid the winger’s termination clause they were not going to sit back and do nothing.

Athletic considered that Barcelona were not in a position to afford this operation as it would breach La Liga’s economic controls and threatened to denounce the matter in order to avoid the forward’s departure.

Nico Williams set to continue at Athletic Club. (Photo by ANDER GILLENEA/AFP via Getty Images)

The Basque club analysed Barça’s accounts and saw that it was impossible that the Blaugrana could afford this operation even with all the economic engineering in the world.

As such, they were prepared to challenge the signing in the event that Nico’s release clause had been paid, as they considered that Barça were in breach of the salary limit rules.

There is a provision in the legislation that can annul any operation that is considered to be outside the financial limits of the club.

In fact, Athletic were completely calm on this issue as they believed they were right and warned La Liga that they were going to take a step that would have led to a major conflict between the two clubs.

La Liga would then have had to mediate in the matter and rule on whether the operation was within the legal channels to resolve the matter.

Athletic now consider the chapter to be closed and have already taken Nico Williams’ continuity for granted, at least for the current season.

The Basque club now want to ensure his continuity in the longer term and are willing to offer him a contract improvement provided that he agrees to raise his release clause amount.