Arsenal midfielder Mart\u00edn Zubimendi has criticised the role of journalists and interviews in amplifying talk of a Real Madrid switch in the summer before his move to the Gunners was completed. The remarks came during a recent interview with El Mundo, in which Zubimendi questioned the value of some media attention.<\/p>\n
“Well, I don\u2019t know. In the end, based on the experiences I\u2019ve had… they haven\u2019t brought me many positive things. Sometimes they\u2019ve even been negative, they\u2019ve gotten me into trouble here and there… There have been some that have caused me awkward moments, so I prefer to avoid them sometimes,” the Arsenal midfielder said when asked if he liked doing interviews.<\/p>\n
At the end of that conversation, when asked if there was any truth to a move to Real Madrid, the Spaniard reacted with a chuckle and added: “You see what I was saying about interviews?”<\/p>\n
The transfer story has its own chronology in the background. Mikel Arteta identified Zubimendi as a midfield target while negotiating for his Real Sociedad teammate Mikel Merino in 2024. During that same window Zubimendi turned down an approach from Liverpool, opting to remain in San Sebastian. It became clear the following January that he would leave for Arsenal at the end of the 2024\u201325 season.<\/p>\n
Arsenal had nearly finalised the transfer at the start of the year, but a series of delays at the beginning of the summer produced speculation of a potential Real Madrid hijack. Media outlets pointed to Zubimendi\u2019s earlier comments about working with Xabi Alonso as a rationale for the swoop. Zubimendi had previously labelled Alonso as his “idol” and said he “loved working with him” when the Real Madrid manager took charge of Sociedad\u2019s reserves in 2019.<\/p>\n
Zubimendi\u2019s public reservations about interviews underline the tension between player statements and transfer coverage that shaped the narrative around his move to Arsenal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zubimendi says interviews and media comments amplified Real Madrid rumours ahead of his Arsenal move<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,969,987],"tags":[983,1132],"class_list":["post-3703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-premier-league","category-real-madrid","tag-agents","tag-transfer-rumours"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}