On Wednesday lunchtime Spanish newspaper AS published an article titled ‘Salah’s representatives offer the Egyptian to Barcelona’
They reiterated the claims throughout the article, saying the Liverpool player has been ‘offered’ to Barca and his agents are trying to ‘figure out how much a deal would cost’.
It was added: ‘AS can report that the Egyptian player has been offered to Barcelona by his representatives and they are ready to open negotiations.
‘There have been meetings between the two parties with the objective being to evaluate his future and the possibility of a move to the Camp Nou.’
Unsurprisingly, this didn’t please Mohamed Salah’s representative Ramy Abbas, who took to Twitter to post the following:
This never happened. @English_AS you need better sources. https://t.co/Y4OpwkoNYV
— Ramy Abbas Issa (@RamyCol) June 6, 2018
That message was sent at 6.41pm and at some point AS updated their English language version of the article to include the denial at the bottom. At the time of writing they are yet to update the Spanish online article.
It may have been expected that AS would withhold the claims from their Thursday newspaper, but that’s not the case. Not only has it been published with zero mention of the denial, despite having plenty of time to include it, they’ve even added a bit.
‘The possible Salah operation has been started from the player’s side. Legal representatives of the footballer have contacted Barcelona who have managed a couple of meetings with them by courtesy, leaving the door open to what might happen. For what they have explained to Barcelona, Liverpool would be willing to sit down to negotiate, but with the harsh conditions that the Blaugrana team knows so well after a year with Coutinho.’
Maybe ‘this never happened’ wasn’t clear enough. It’s one thing for AS to stand by their story, but it’s quite another to do so without mentioning the denial, which was made publicly to them, and whilst adding more about what has already been denied.
