Ex-Barcelona director Javier Bordas made an interesting claim about Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois and narrated how he failed to bring the Belgian to Camp Nou.

According to a report by the Spanish news outlet Diario AS, the former Barcelona chief who served during the time of Josep Maria Bartomeu, Javier Bordas claimed in an episode of the Nude Project podcast that he attempted to sign Thibaut Courtois.

After completing his loan spell at Atletico Madrid, the current Real Madrid goalkeeper reportedly did not want to go back to Chelsea. Barcelona could have capitalised on the opportunity but the signings of Claudio Bravo and Marc-Andre Ter Stegen closed that affair.

The former Barca director said:  “I was able to bring Courtois to Barça. It will bother him that I say it because he is playing for Real Madrid. It was when he was at Atlético. He preferred to come to Barça rather than go to Chelsea, but the coaches preferred to sign Ter Stegen and Claudio Bravo”.

Apart from echoing his failure to sign Courtois, Javier Bordas also claimed that he had moved to bring in superstar Kylian Mbappe. He remarked that the Barcelona coaches preferred Ousmane Dembele more as he would be able to contribute fairly well to their style of play.

He said: “ “I moved for Mbappé. He was able to sign for Barça. We did not specify any price, but it would have reached about 100 million. The coaches told us that the one we had to sign was Dembélé”

This is not the first time Javier Bordas has made these claims about contemporary superstars. In fact, during his tenure as the director under Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, he had voiced several of Barcelona’s attempts to bring in next-generation players and the collapse of those due to a lack of foresight from their coaching department.