Tuesday afternoon saw AS’ Tomas Roncero claim Alvaro Morara had taken a break from his honeymoon, which had moved to Ibiza, to travel to Madrid.
The suggestion was he was there to bang some heads together and get his Manchester United move sorted out. Morata travelled to Madrid for a ‘few hours’ and wasn’t seen there, travelling there, or leaving there.
One would normally expect AS to elaborate on the trip in their newspaper the following day, after all this is potentially one of the biggest transfers ever, but they haven’t.
In 4 or 5 pages packed with Real Madrid stories, which includes a full retrospective match report from a 2005 friendly with an MLS All Stars side, Morata allegedly travelling to Madrid to pursue an €80m transfer gets a solitary sentence.
To illustrate further why that’s odd, Karim Benzema uploading a picture of himself to Instagram was deemed worthy of more words. The president of Slovenia visiting the Bernabeu got the same amount of words.
Over to Marca, and there’s a tiny bit more effort made. Their Wednesday newspaper features a paragraph on the situation, saying Jose Mourinho is the big Morata backer at Manchester United.
Marca go on to say the most ‘logical’ thing is for the move to come off, so negotiations, which have already begun, should end up ‘fruitful’.
There’s also a Marca article with quotes from Florentino Perez’s Tuesday interview with Spanish radio, in which he said: “I think there are no negotiations with United and it is not true there is an agreement. It’s not the end of June, and until August 31st there is time. We will do what is best, but Madrid is not a salesman.”
The Spanish side of a possible Morata deal is certainly in no rush. Manchester United don’t appear to have come back with a fresh offer, and there’s no big developments.
Things can change as quickly as Manchester United want them to, depending on the amount offered, but it’s now increasingly clear that previous suggestions a move was imminent were simply wrong.
For what would be one of the biggest transfers of all time, this is barely getting any coverage at all in the Madrid leaning Spanish media. Sure, they throw out the odd article for internet hits, but don’t give that any real relevance in their actual newspapers.
This isn’t fingers-in-ears stuff from the Madrid media either, getting €75m+ for Morata wouldn’t be seen as a loss. Right now, until Manchester United move to change things, there’s simply nothing for the Spanish newspapers to say.
And that, truly, is quite a development.
