Barcelona’s former sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta says the club wanted to sign Sergio Aguero originally, but ended up going for Liverpool's Luis Suarez.

Sport EN

Zubizarreta, who was sacked by the club last January, revealed in an interview with Marca that the original plan was to make a move for the Manchester City striker.

Augero is a long-time friend of Lionel Messi and it was thought that he would fit straight into the team, although Suarez himself has since built up an excellent relationship with Messi and has helped forge one of the most formidable front threes in football history - Neymar being the third member.

“We had several options, but Luis Suarez was not the first option - he knows that,” Zubizarreta admitted.

“We were planning to sign Aguero, but that didn’t come off.

“After that, though, there were no doubts: Luis Suarez was our only objective.”

The ex-Spain goalkeeper also explained that Suarez’s bite on Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup in Brazil helped Barça’s move for the Uruguayan as it left some of their competitors reluctant to push through a deal.

“While we were negotiating for him the [biting] incident happened with Chiellini,” he added.

“That meant a lot of the clubs hoping to sign him had doubts [about committing to a deal].

“They were questioning his character and they didn’t know how serious the ban was going to be.

“I thought it was the moment to accelerate our bid to sign him.”