Jérémy Mathieu, a former central defender who ended his career with Sporting last season, spent three seasons at Barcelona before heading to Alvalade. However, the French defender, who at the time was wearing the Valencia captain’s armband, was not exactly interested in moving to Camp Nou.
«I didn’t want to go to Barcelona. When the club approached me, I was captain of Valencia, I was enjoying my life there and I asked myself: ‘Am I going to polish the bank in Barcelona?’ », Said Mathieu, 37, in an interview with the newspaper ‘L’Equipe’.
“When I received the contract that Barcelona offered me, I wrote a new one, in which there was a salary between what I was getting at that moment and what I was offered by Barça. I showed this fake contract to Valencia’s sporting director [Rufete] and said to him: ‘If you give me this, I will stay.’ »He replied that it shouldn’t be a problem and we called the president together [Amadeo Salvo], which he rejected. Rufete couldn’t believe it. I tore the paper up and announced: ‘Then I’m leaving.’ I realized that they were not counting on me », told the Frenchman.
Jérémy Mathieu represented Barcelona between 2014 and 2017, the year he moved to Sporting.
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