Atletico Madrid hoping Antoine Griezmann can persuade Manchester United target to join

Atletico Madrid have placed special emphasis on free transfers in recent years as they look to stick within their salary limit, and it certainly keeps the cost of transfers down. The flipside of that is that those players tend to have a number of suitors.

That is the case for Adrien Rabiot, for whom competition is high this summer. Juventus are hoping to retain the French international, who is out of contract this summer, and has started in all but one of his 48 matches this season. In addition to that, he has 11 goals and 6 assists to his name.

Manchester United have been linked to him since last summer, and are once again favourites to bring him in this time round, with the strongest economic proposal. Rabiot is on a €6m annual salary as per Diario AS. Juventus, despite their lack of resources after failing to qualify for the Champions League, hope to persuade him with Max Allegri, who has won the trust of the Frenchman.

Atletico Madrid’s financial pitch is likely to come in between that Juventus and United, but hope that they will be able to persuade Rabiot to join them with Antoine Griezmann. The French World Cup-winner has shared a dressing room with Rabiot for the national side for some time.

Griezmann tends to have a good relationship with those around him in the dressing room, and especially with Les Bleus. Rabiot would add to a midfield that already has Koke Resurreccion, Rodrigo de Paul and Marcos Llorente, and perhaps it is no coincidence that reports about the latter no longer being ‘untouchable’ emerging earlier this week. Nevertheless, Los Colchoneros will have their work cut out to sign Rabiot.