William Saliba has acknowledged that interest from Real Madrid gave him pause, but he insisted the decision to commit long term to Arsenal was straightforward. The centre back, who had already made clear his wish to extend at the club and to deliver major silverware at the Emirates before considering a move, spoke about the Madrid approach in an interview with T\u00e9l\u00e9foot.<\/p>\n
“Of course, it\u2019s always tempting when a club like that tries to lure you, but for me, [my desire] was to stay at Arsenal . First, win trophies, before thinking about anything else,” Saliba said, underlining the priorities that led to his new contract.<\/p>\n
Links between Saliba and Real Madrid were aided by his Bondy origins, the same Parisian suburb that produced Kylian Mbapp\u00e9. The pair came through the local academy there and have been discussed as potential club team-mates at some point. When asked about the prospect of joining up with his fellow Bondy native in Madrid next season, Saliba laughed: “No, no, the Bondy connection is with the French national team, for now.”<\/p>\n
Arsenal have secured Saliba and his defensive partner Gabriel on long-term deals, leaving the club in a comfortable position at centre back for the foreseeable future. Real Madrid, by contrast, continue to search for defensive reinforcements. The La Liga leaders could see David Alaba and Antonio R\u00fcdiger depart next summer, which would open space for at least one new signing.<\/p>\n
Sources indicate Madrid are focusing on free transfers as they plan for those departures. Among the names reported as under consideration are Crystal Palace\u2019s Marc Gu\u00e9hi, Liverpool\u2019s Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 and Bayern Munich\u2019s Dayot Upamecano. For now, Saliba\u2019s public stance is clear: the Madrid interest was flattering but did not alter his commitment to Arsenal and the objective of winning trophies there first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saliba says Madrid interest was tempting but he signed a new Arsenal deal to win trophies. next term<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1163],"tags":[983,1032,1077],"class_list":["post-4236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-contract-disputes","tag-contract-renewal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4236","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=4236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}