“We all know how the world of football works. They wanted to apply pressure on Athleticzales, on my brother. They put together a media campaign that they thought would work. I think, us, Athletic as a club, when we want a player, we do it under the radar.”

“It’s done a lot of damage. It’s sullied a lot of things. Many of the things that they said, that were leaked to the media or on social media, were lies. I’ll be honest, my brother had more or less taken the decision, but we still had to put together and redact a contract that was very large. To commit until 2035. You couldn’t just announce it from one day to the next.”