{"id":324436,"date":"2026-04-25T18:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T13:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/?p=324436"},"modified":"2026-04-25T18:37:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T13:07:00","slug":"arsenal-set-to-battle-atletico-madrid-to-sign-champions-league-star-on-free-transfer-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/2026\/04\/25\/arsenal-set-to-battle-atletico-madrid-to-sign-champions-league-star-on-free-transfer-football\/","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal set to battle Atletico Madrid to sign Champions League star on free transfer | Football"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"img-container shareable-item wp-caption\">\n<div class=\"img-wrap\">\n\t\t\t<\/div><figcaption>Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta (Picture: Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Arsenal are set to do battle with Atletico Madrid to try to sign Borussia Dortmund star Julian Brandt, in keeping with reports in Spain.<\/p>\n<p>Each clubs will face off within the Champions League semi-finals over the following fortnight as they appear to punch their ticket to the ultimate in Budapest.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless it appears that they can even be rivalling one another within the transfer market this summer to sign Germany international Brandt on a free transfer.<\/p>\n<p>In response to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marca.com\/futbol\/atletico\/2026\/04\/23\/atletico-julian-brandt.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Marca<\/a>, Atletico sporting director\u00a0Mateu Alemany has kept an in depth eye on Brandt because the Spanish club seek to search out a substitute for the departing Antoine Griezmann.<\/p>\n<p>But Brandt, who has ten goal involvements in 25 Bundesliga matches this season, can be said to be attracting interest from Arsenal ahead of what guarantees to be one other pivotal summer window for the Gunners.<\/p>\n<p>Brandt joined Dortmund in 2019 from Bayer Leverkusen, but is about to depart the German club after seven years having didn&#8217;t agree terms on a brand new deal.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018After open talks, we agreed that the contract that is about to run out wouldn&#8217;t be renewed,\u2019 Dortmund\u2019s managing director for sport Lars Ricken\u00a0told Sky Germany last month.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"img-container shareable-item wp-caption\">\n<div class=\"img-wrap\">\n\t\t<img width=\"594\" height=\"396\" src=\"https:\/\/metro.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2270326909.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;w=594\" class=\"article-image wp-image-28112965\" alt=\"Borussia Dortmund v Bayer 04 Leverkusen - Bundesliga\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\">\t<\/div><figcaption>Julian Brandt is attracting loads of suitors around Europe (Picture: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201c[He has] played a couple of hundred games for Borussia Dortmund. I believe we will only feel gratitude towards him. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018He spent seven years with us and was sometimes viewed critically. Today he arrange one other goal. I at all times appreciated his numbers. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018He\u2019ll turn 30 in a couple of weeks, and we will look to maneuver in a rather latest direction \u2014 so it will possibly even be a possibility for either side.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Speaking earlier this month, Brandt said he had a couple of options along with his next move, and didn&#8217;t rule out staying within the Bundesliga.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Let yourself be surprised. There are lots of ideas, not every idea is sweet, but there are a lot of ideas,\u2019 Brandt told Sky Germany.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018In principle, I\u2019m not ruling anything out. But there are things I prefer, and there are things I currently find harder to assume. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018As I said: there are one or two ideas, but the whole lot in the end.\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"\"><strong>For more stories like this,\u00a0check our sport page<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\"><strong>Follow Metro Sport for the most recent news on <meta charset=\"utf-8\"><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sportmetro\">Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Metro_Sport\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/metrosportuk\/\">Instagram<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"metro-more-link\"><svg><title>Arrow<\/title>\n<use xlink:href=\"#common-right-arrow\" href=\"#common-right-arrow\"><\/use><\/svg><span class=\"mor-link\" data-track-module=\"mor-link_article\">MORE: Arsenal begin talks to sign Manchester United goal with \u00a369m clause after impressing Mikel Arteta<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"metro-more-link\"><svg><title>Arrow<\/title>\n<use xlink:href=\"#common-right-arrow\" href=\"#common-right-arrow\"><\/use><\/svg><span class=\"mor-link\" data-track-module=\"mor-link_article\">MORE: Arsenal vs Newcastle: Predicted lineup today and confirmed team news<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"metro-more-link\"><svg><title>Arrow<\/title>\n<use xlink:href=\"#common-right-arrow\" href=\"#common-right-arrow\"><\/use><\/svg><span class=\"mor-link\" data-track-module=\"mor-link_article\">MORE: Chelsea told to re-sign \u2018phenomenal\u2019 Champions League star they need to \u2018never have let go\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<section id=\"share-buttons-bottom\" class=\"share-buttons share-buttons-bottom\"><a class=\"metro-button share-bar-comments\" data-vars-position=\"bottom\" href=\"#metro-comments-container\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t<span><svg><title>Comment now<\/title>\n<use xlink:href=\"#social-comment\" href=\"#social-comment\"><\/use><\/svg><\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"share-bar-comments__label\">Comments<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<span><svg><title>Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google<\/title>\n<use xlink:href=\"#social-preferred-source\" href=\"#social-preferred-source\"><\/use><\/svg><\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"share-bar-preferred-source__label\">Add as preferred source<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/section>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta (Picture: Getty) Arsenal are set to do battle with Atletico Madrid to try to sign Borussia Dortmund star Julian Brandt, in keeping with reports in Spain. Each clubs will face off within the Champions League semi-finals over the following fortnight as they appear to punch their ticket to the ultimate in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":324437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20686],"tags":[2605,15249,2917,5941,5479,805,622,3166,1083,6768,795,3006],"class_list":["post-324436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-arsenal","tag-atletico","tag-battle","tag-champions","tag-football","tag-free","tag-league","tag-madrid","tag-set","tag-sign","tag-star","tag-transfer"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324436"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324439,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324436\/revisions\/324439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}