NEWS: Football
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s promise to play for Real Madrid comes flooding back after his free transfer from Arsenal to Barcelona.

The Gabon star final­ly end­ed his Arse­nal hell this week when he left north Lon­don to join Bar­ca on a free transfer.

Pierre-Emer­ick Aubameyang joined Barcelona this week and looks set to be a key man in Cat­alo­nia, replac­ing Ser­gio Aguero up front for Xav­i’s men.

But while his shot looks good on the one hand, it ends his chances of play­ing for Madrid as he had hoped before.

In fact, when Aubameyang played for Borus­sia Dort­mund, he said he would only leave the Ger­man team for Madrid.

The 32-year-old said at the time: “The only club I would leave Dort­mund for is Real Madrid. If they don’t come, I don’t leave.

“My grand­fa­ther, my moth­er’s father, always want­ed me to play in Spain.

“Two years ago, when he died, I promised him that one day I would play for Real — and I’m work­ing hard to achieve that goal.

“Real Madrid is my main tar­get but at the moment I like it in Dort­mund. If there is a chance to go to Madrid, I will imme­di­ate­ly say yes — but at the moment there is no contact. ”

Aubameyang’s dra­mat­ic move to Barcelona on dead­line day appeared to have fall­en through, when the LaLi­ga side could not reach an agree­ment with Arse­nal over how much of his £350,000-a-week wage they would would pay under a loan agreement.

But the deal was back on after Arse­nal paid a £7m sev­er­ance pack­age to take their for­mer skip­per off the books.

Aubameyang was then free to sign for Barcelona.

He may have been scared when it emerged Bar­ca would­n’t be able to name any of their four Jan­u­ary sign­ings to their Europa League squad for the rest of the campaign.