Marca and Cadena SER are reporting Sunday night that Atlético Madrid star Antoine Griezmann left Spain shortly after his side’s 3-2 loss to Real Madrid in the Bernabéu in order to sign for Major League Soccer’s Orlando City SC.
Per Matteo Moretto and David Medina — who had the news first at Marca — Griezmann is flying to United States with Atlético’s permission. The 35-year-old is heading for Orlando, Florida, where he will sign “the last big contract of his brilliant career” and officially join the Lions from June, after the European football season ends.
Fabrizio Romano claims that Griezmann will join Orlando City on a free transfer, and that his contract there will run for two years.
Orlando City has been pursuing Griezmann for the past month, but the player had made clear that he was not going to leave Atlético midseason. Griezmann is hoping to win the Copa del Rey on April 18, when Atlético will face his former club Real Sociedad in the final at Sevilla’s Estadio de La Cartuja, and Atlético are taking on FC Barcelona (for whom Griezmann played between 2019 and 2021) in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals next month as well.
Griezmann is one of the most popular players in Atlético’s history and he is the club’s all-time top scorer with 211 goals. Despite starting this season in a reserve role, the World Cup-winning forward has reasserted his importance to Diego Simeone with a series of brilliant performances since the end of November — proving once more that the club will have a massive challenge to replace him in Apollo Sports Capital’s first summer as majority shareholders.
Griezmann, who twice finished third in Ballon d’Or voting while at Atlético, has scored 13 goals and provided four assists in 42 appearances across all competitions. He is Atleti’s top scorer in the Copa del Rey with five goals, and no player in LaLiga has more goals as a substitute than Griezmann with six.