Vice president Yuste: "I felt sad for Villa"

Barcelona sports vice president Rafael Yuste gave an interview to Catalan sports paper Sport.





Which transfer operation was your debut?
The sale of Ronaldinho. That's where I learnt that a football player always ends up playing where he wants to play. For us, the best option was Manchester City, but he wanted to go to Milan and he ended up in Milan.

What do you think of this world of football?
Well... Complicated. It's about persons, so there's a human factor you should be able to manage. And then you have the clubs, coaches, intermediaries, press... It's very complicated.

You had signed Villa?
The boy wanted to come. We went to Madrid to close the operation with Valencia but at the last minute they asked an exaggerated sum of money that was above our budget. I felt sad for Villa that it didn't go through.

So then you went after Ibrahimovic...
He was the dream of Guardiola. And ours, but it always seemed something far, impossible, until we decided to actually try it.

That suddenly crossed your mind...
I've always been very persistent and I think nothing is impossible. I thought there was a possibility if we could convince Eto'o. We had one advantage: we knew that the dream of Ibra was to play at Barça.

And so you went to Milan...
That's where we already had a series of circumstances that helped us. Moratti was in Milan, we could land at the airport that same afternoon when we returned from Ukraine and the president negotiated very well. You can see the result - Ibra seemed impossible but we signed him.

Let's see if the same happens with Ribéry...
No, Bayern doesn't want to sell him. The day they put him on the market, we'll be the first to be informed.

What about Mascherano, Chygrynskiy, Cesc...?
We know that the priorities of Pep are a centre-back and a midfielder. We'll make a decision when the moment is there. To uptouch a Picasso is very difficult.

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