A year after convincing Paul Pogba to join a team outside of the Uefa Champions League, Manchester United are now targeting his friend, Antoine Griezmann from Atletico Madrid. And the club has a Champions League berth to help in the recruitment.

According to close friends of Griezmann, Atletico’s No 7 wants to join United, who have been interested in signing him for over a year and have made him a priority target since the start of 2017.

Reliable sources also state that Griezmann, 26, has told Atletico that he wants to leave, but Atletico will be in no mood to ease his departure and they deny the claim.

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■ Podcast: Debating Wenger’s new contract and Man City’s spending

■ Real Madrid v Juventus: Gareth Bale ‘desperate’ to return to side

■ Transfer talk: Man City chairman dismisses Sergio Aguero exit rumours

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Griezmann has a contract until 2021 and a release clause of €100 million (Dh412m). United, who have sought out opinion on the player from many sources including several in Spain, know they would have to come close to the €105m fee which the club agreed to pay for Pogba in a world-record transfer fee last year.

Atletico are under little pressure to sell Griezmann, who they signed for a substantial €30m fee from Real Sociedad three years ago. The Madrid side, who have reached at least the semi-finals of the Champions League in three of the last four seasons, want to keep their best talent ahead of their move to a new 70,000-capacity stadium in August.

An astute mixture of home-grown players and clever recruitment has made Atletico a world football power. But a Pogba-sized fee would dwarf their previous record transfer sales.

Their current record sale is the €42.8 million they received from Monaco for Radamel Falcao in 2013, followed by €40.8m from selling Jackson Martinez to GZ Evergrande in 2015.

Atletico sold David De Gea to United in 2011 for a fee rising to €24.3 million, but they have also rejected the Old Trafford club’s overtures for other players, most recently defender Jose Gimenez.

Atletico will find out on Thursday if their two-window transfer ban is lifted by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, allowing them to sign players. They appealed in April against the ban on signing new players given to them and neighbours Real Madrid in January 2016 for irregularities in signing foreign players under 18. If lifted, they could use money from any Griezmann sale to sign a replacement, with Lyon’s Alexandre Lacazette being linked.

Jose Mourinho gave a list of the players he wants to sign to United’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward two months ago. The Portuguese has his preferred option for the four positions he’s identified, with secondary and third options for each.

United acted decisively in the transfer market last summer, an improvement on Woodward’s first transfer window in 2013.

Mourinho knows that United need to improve their attack. His side scored only 54 goals in 38 league games. The five sides above United scored at least 77.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who only signed a one-year contract until the end of this season, is injured and will miss the start of next season wherever he is, while club captain Wayne Rooney is expected to leave United after 13 record-breaking years.

Griezmann, who rated his chances of moving to United as “six out of 10” at the start of the month, had a tough first few months at Atletico and confided in friends about his frustrations, but he also heeded their advice and became their standout player, scoring 25 goals in his first season, 32 in his second and 26 this season.

A close friend of United’s Pogba and the former United defender Patrice Evra, Griezmann can play on either wing, as a centre forward or second forward. At which club is still to be confirmed.

Long road back for Marquez

At the start of January 2016, Catalan manager Manolo Marquez was out of work and considering his future in football — and a future outside of the game he loved. He was well respected as a manager in Spain’s regional third division, well known in Catalonia as much for his clear ideas about what an attacking football team should look like, as for his principles which led to him losing one job for refusing to bow to pressure from above to select a player.

While in charge of Espanyol’s reserve team, Marquez had given Eric Bailly his professional debut and he possesses a detailed, anorakish knowledge of players at every level in Spain.

While out of work he learnt English in London and studied games at all levels. He watched teams from non-league Stockport County to Manchester United against Chelsea, standing with the fans to understand their culture.

But he still did not have a job. He had been offered one in Qatar but was reluctant to be so far away from his teenage daughter.

By January 2016, with his professional and private life crumbling, Marquez had used up any savings and was unemployed. He had lost a job early in the 2015/16 season at a club whose finances were as stable as a house made of straw and Spanish law forbids a football manager to take charge of more than one team each season.

Just as Marquez was thinking of a future out of football, he received an offer to manager the reserve team of Las Palmas in Spain’s third division. The salary was a living one, plus he would get a car and an apartment. Locals did not like the fact that he was not a Canarian, but his assistant was to be Juan Carlos Valeron, a Las Palmas legend and one of the most technically sublime footballers of his generation.

The pair hit it off straight away. Both in their 40s, and they went to work, with little money, a youthful team and pure ideas of how football should be played. Marquez’s brief was two-fold and intertwined: get the team playing at a higher level and produce players for the first team.

Las Palmas’s reserves were an immediate success, winning the league with an impressive 94 points from 38 games, of which they won 31. The second placed team had 66 points. Las Palmas’ goal difference was plus-72, but even their points haul was not enough for automatic promotion in Spain, where teams must go through a play-off.

They were paired with a Navarran team, Pena Sport, in a two-legged play-off. Las Palmas won home and away, the second leg 3-0. The Canarian press praised the quiet Catalan, the first-team players pushed for him and Valeron to replace the outgoing Quique Setein, but the club will first go for a coach with top-flight experience.

Marquez will have to wait, but first he can continue his work at a higher level.

“Catalan and Gran Canarian,” wrote a leading Canarian newspaper, the ultimate compliment. “Football has no frontiers.” He has won them over.

Game of the week

• Real Madrid v Juventus, Uefa Champions League final in Cardiff: Madrid, the team who dominated the European Cup in its formative years, are attempting to become the first team in the Champions League era to retain the trophy. Juventus, the 2015 finalists who knocked out Madrid en route to a Berlin defeat by Barcelona, are wilier and hungrier.

What else?

• Girona are the team that keep failing in their attempt to make a first ever promotion to Spain’s Primera Liga. Four times in recent years they have been in a strong position for automatic promotion, each time they have ended up in the play-offs, which they have been unable to win.

The team from a Catalan city of 98,000, located 100 kilometres north of Barcelona, have looked stronger than ever this season and sat second for most of it behind champions Levante. Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, who invited them to train in Manchester pre-season, keeps close tabs on them — and not just because three of his players are on loan there.

Two months ago, Girona held an 11-point advantage over the team in third. Girona have managed only three wins in their last 12 games since. They had managed ten in the previous 12.

The cushion is down to five points after losing at the weekend to Catalan neighbours Gimnastic Tarragona. Their players were then criticised after a video was published in which a player is heard asking where the fans were in the winter, when crowds were lower in a city which has always struggled to attract a substantial match-going support, in part because so many locals support Barça. In an apology, he claimed it was a joke aimed at a friend he had spotted in the crowd.

Fortunately for Girona, third-placed Getafe also lost. Girona’s five-point advantage remains with two games left. They need one point, starting with Sunday’s home match with mid-table Real Zaragoza, who knocked them out of the play-offs in 2015 with a 4-1 second leg win — that after Girona had won the first leg 3-0 away.

Girona’s final game is at Cordoba a week later. Sunday is the biggest game in their history. They can’t fail again, surely.

• Barcelona appointed Ernesto Valverde as their new manager for next season.

The cerebral former player, who has been a success at Athletic Bilbao, will bring experience, integrity and pragmatism as he replaces Luis Enrique after three years in charge. Enrique wants to rest for a year. A huge success at Camp Nou, he’s earned it.

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