Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo arrived at Real Madrid from Flamengo and Santos in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
Los Blancos reached an agreement with Flamengo for Vinícius’ transfer in 2017 and a similar deal was repeated with Santos for Rodrygo.
Barcelona were keen on signing the Brazilian duo before they ended up in Madrid. Catalan newspaper Sport travelled to São Paulo to interview André Cury, the former head of Barcelona in South America.
The Camp Nou side’s former official has detailed how the club were left frustrated in their efforts to sign both Vinícius and Rodrygo.
“With Vinicius, we were three and a half years ahead of Madrid. This is another issue. His agents, Frederico Penna and Stefano Hawilla, who had reached a compromise with Barcelona, betrayed us,” he said.
“The client of their company was us and not Madrid. I had a great friendship with them, to the point of being the best man at their wedding and godfather to their children.
“At the key moment of the operation, they stabbed us. Fifteen days before signing for Madrid, here in Brazil, Vinicius said that he was a Barca fan, that his idol was Neymar and affirmed that Messi was better than Cristiano. Then he said what he wanted when he was already in Madrid.
“There was a verbal commitment. Juni Calafat himself said that it was almost impossible to close it because he knew the relationship I had with the player’s environment. The agents returned to Barcelona, closed the definitive agreement with us, shook our hands… and then they disappeared and betrayed us.”
Both Brazilians are 20-years-old and operate in the wide positions. Cury is of the belief Real Madrid went for Rodrygo in fear of losing him to their arch-rivals Barcelona.
“They did not trust Vinicius and feared that they had signed the wrong player and we [would sign] the right one. For this reason, they have two players of the same age, in the same position and from outside EU,” Cury explained.
“I had known Rodrygo for a long time and he had a profile to play for Barca. I started negotiating with his agent, Nick Arcuri. The club met twice here in Brazil with the president of Santos: there was Óscar Grau, Pep Segura and me. I told them we had to leave with the business closed. We did not. And Madrid arrived.”
Cury also detailed Real Madrid ended up paying more to secure the South American duo’s services than Barcelona would have invested in their signings.
“They were €18m euros for Vinicius and €20m for Rodrygo. Madrid spent €60m on Vinicius, €45m for transfer, €6m for [agent] commission and €8m for signing bonus and his first salary was €3m net,” Cury added.
“With Rodrygo, it was €65m, they paid five times more for signing and salary than we would. Despite everything, Rodrygo’s father called me saying that he preferred to go to Barca if we can reach an agreement with Santos.
“There was no agreement between clubs, since we did not place the transfer money on the table. Barca’s response was that they would not put a single euro more than what had already been offered.”
