Diego Simeone reveals Atletico Madrid “did everything” to sign Diego Costa from Chelsea
Athletico Madrid Boss Diego Simeone has recently revealed that Diego Costa could not return to his former club due to financial reasons.
DIEGO COSTA joined Chelsea in 2014 after a fantastic season in Spain where he rivalled the goal tally of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
He built on that in his first year with the Blues lifting the Premier league trophy at the end of it.
However, the Brazilian like many of his teammates struggled to find the same form as the previous year and Atletico became interested in re-signing the Spaniard following Jackson Martinez’s move to Chinese side Guangzhou Evergrande.
Diego Simeone told Marca “I was crystal clear with Diego about what we were trying to do and how long we’d wait for an answer and that’s why we’ve still got a great relationship today"
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The Atletico boss continued “The problem we came up against was that there tend not to be buy-out clauses in England and so Chelsea could say to us ‘we want £180 million’ or ‘we don’t want to sell.’
“From my point of view both I and the club did everything we possibly could to get him back to Atletico but what happened was we set a date after which he had to take action and we signed Kevin Gameiro instead.”
Reports over the summer suggested that Costa was unhappy at Stamford Bridge and that he wanted a move back to La Liga, to reunite with Simeone, although he seems to be enjoying his role in Antonio Conte’s team.
Costa is currently the leading scorer in the Premier League, scoring 13 goals in 17 appearances, while he has also claimed five assists.
Atletico where unable to secure the signature of Diego Costa and instead signed Kevin Gameiro form Sevilla, the striker partners fellow Frenchman Antoine Griezmann up front.
Atletico have had a disappointing season so far, they sit sixth, nine points off the top where there Madrid rivals top the table with a game in hand.