Spanish newspaper Marca on Friday cover the situation surrounding Asier Illarramendi, they call him Illarra and we're happy to go with them on that. The situation is that Real Madrid have finally convinced Cruzeiro to accept less than their €15m valuation of Lucas Silva, a negotiation process which has been going on for some time and saved Madrid the huge sum of €2m. The arrival of the Brazilian more or less signals the end of Illarra at Real Madrid.
He's not been a runaway success, that's a nice way of putting it. Illarra was widely wanted when he was at Real Sociedad but Madrid swooped in, now they want to pull out of the situation and there's an obvious option. That option is Athletic Club Bilbao who have a relatively big pile of cash and can only spend it on Basque players.
Athletic have offered €25m, this pleases Madrid and they'd like to take it. However, Illarra is 'not excited' about the prospect. Madrid are trying to convince him, gently. There's another club at the table who Illara would need no convincing to join, and that's Arsenal say Marca. The midfielder has an offer on the table from Arsenal and 'would accept without thinking'. He's enchanted by the Premier League and London. The Spaniard doesn't mind waiting until the summer to make it happen.
The only problem is, the clubs haven't agreed anything and it's widely assumed that Arsenal wouldn't match Athletic's offer.
This story is disputed by some others in Spain who think Illarra is keen on a move to Athletic but El Correo, closest to Athletic, and usually first with their transfer news, aren't planning a street party yet. They think the player is taking his time to let everything sink in and certainly not already packing his bags for a move back to the Basque region. Real Sociedad have already come out and said it would hurt their fans if the player went to Athletic and El Correo point out Illarra turned the Bilbao club down as youngster.
The idea of Arsenal interest, at a lower price and for the summer, is not what Madrid wanted.
