Atletico Madrid manager Diego Simeone was bullish in his interest for his former player Diego Costa. The Atletico Madrid manager wanted to sign Costa by all means, but Chelsea held on to their prized forward, and the Spanish international has been a big hit this season.

Speaking about his bid to buy back Costa, Simeone told Marca: “I was crystal clear with Diego about what we were trying to do and how long we’d wait for an answer and that’s why we’ve still got a great relationship today.”

“The problem we came up against was that there tend not to be buyout clauses in England and so Chelsea could say to us: ‘we want £180m’ or ‘we don’t want to sell’.

“From my point of view both I and the club did everything we possibly could to get him back to Atletico but what happened was we set a date after which we had to take action and we signed Kevin Gameiro instead.”