Football transfer rumors: Philippe Coutinho to PSG or Barcelona?
Cool your head Diego. Put yourself in a happy place. How about the Vicente Calderón Stadium? You were always loved there, The Guardian reports.
Atlético Madrid's president, Enrique Cerezo, reckons the Chelsea striker is already visualising himself in his safe space only two years after doing one for Stamford Bridge for £32m. "We are there, he wants to come. But that is already complicated," Cerezo blabbed on live TV. "[Diego] Simeone wants new players and one of those is a striker. We desire a striker with goals, a good salary and the ability to help us win many trophies." Atlético have yet to learn how to round up figures, so value Costa at £29.6m. They could do with Antonio Conte getting a wriggle on and signing Álvaro Morata or Romelu Lukaku but Euro 2016 appears to be getting in the way.
One area where Chelsea aren't hanging around is at right-back, where Conte wants to cast aside one 32-year-old, Branislav Ivanovic, and replace him with another, Stephan Lichtsteiner. At some point in the past 18 months Ivanovic appears to have forgotten what the point of defending is and Conte believes theJuventus full-back Lichtsteiner hasn't yet been afflicted by early-onset cloddishness. Juve will scoot off and snaffle Manchester United's Matteo Darmianto replace him.
Roma are close to accepting a £32m bid for their Belgium midfielder Radja Nainggolan, who has discovered a new best friend at Euro 2016, Thibaut Courtois, a man who previously ignored him but who now can't stop going on about how great the new lion enclosure is at London Zoo and how much better Nainggolan's ridiculous hair would look if he had it sculpted in SW6.
PSG's raging lust for Philippe Coutinho has hit peak horn after the Liverpool playmaker's hat-trick during the 7-1 shoeing of Haiti in the Copa América. Not that Coutinho is letting it affect him, nosiree. "As far as I know, there's no offer," he said, not even allowing himself a sneaky look on Google to see if Right Move has a French website. "I'm here with the national team, this subject is for my representatives. More important for me is to be here, focused on the national team and having a good tournament. That's where my head is," he added, cruelly putting this song in the Mill's head. Barcelona are also sniffing around, however, and are said to be willing to offer much more than the reported £23m that PSG sent the way of Anfield, presumably just to make Jürgen Klopp do one of his funny faces.
Ed Woodward is close to patting himself on the back and saying: "Ed, you've done it again son" after Manchester United emerged as the frontrunners to sign Paul Pogba for only £77.2m more than the £800,000 the club let him leave for four years ago. Meanwhile, José Mourinho doesn't really care one way or the other and is busy sourcing more defenders to place in the wall he is hoping to build at Old Trafford.
Liverpool believe it's about time they had an actual good Belgian among their ranks. They'll try to persuade Anderlecht to part with their 19-year-old midfielderSamuel Bastien to make this a reality.
And having left Celtic as a free agent, Anthony Stokes will run straight into the arms of Alan Stubbs, the new Rotherham manager, who was able to squeeze a few goals out of the striker on loan at Hibernian last season.
Oh, and Manchester City have waved a load of lolly in the direction of Bayern Munich while laughing hysterically at claims made by Douglas Costa that no player from the Allianz Arena will be allowed to leave for the Etihad.
