Manchester City are considering legal action after Real Madrid presidential candidate Enrique Riquelme claimed he would sign Erling Haaland if elected.<\/p>\n
Spanish businessman Riquelme made the remarks during a television appearance on Wednesday as he promoted his bid to become Real Madrid president ahead of Sunday’s election.<\/p>\n
While outlining his plans, he held up a Real Madrid shirt bearing Haaland\u2019s name and the number nine.<\/p>\n
“Haaland has a release clause and wants to join Real Madrid,” Riquelme said.<\/p>\n
City have strongly denied the claims.<\/p>\n
A club spokesperson said: “The stories which have emerged from Spain regarding the future of Erling Haaland are untrue.<\/p>\n
“There is no chance of this happening and there is no contractual clause to enable it.<\/p>\n
“We are considering legal action for the use of our player image in this context.”<\/p>\n
Haaland joined City in 2022 and signed a new nine-and-a-half-year contract in January 2025, tying him to the club until 2034.<\/p>\n
The Norway striker has been a prolific scorer since arriving at the Etihad Stadium, helping City win two Premier League titles and the Champions League.<\/p>\n
He has struck 162 times in 198 appearances for the club and won the Premier League\u2019s Golden Boot award in three of the past four years.<\/p>\n
Speaking in his annual interview with the club\u2019s media channels, City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak described the 25-year-old as a “superstar” and a “goalscoring machine” and expects him to add the Ballon d\u2019Or to his trophy collection.<\/p>\n
Al Mubarak said: “I consider him the best striker in the world, I consider him a Ballon d\u2019Or winner hopefully soon.<\/p>\n
“And I consider him someone that has the mindset, that winning mindset, that is the essence of this team and this club. This young man is a winner.”<\/p>\n
Riquelme also said he would sign City midfielder Rodri, whose current contract runs until 2027.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old Spain international has previously been linked with Real but City still consider him to be part of their plans.<\/p>\n
Rodri said earlier this week he did not want to discuss his future until after the World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester City are considering legal action after Real Madrid presidential candidate Enrique Riquelme claimed he would sign Erling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-482904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}