No Barcelona bid for Mariano, insist Sevilla

Sevilla chairman Jose Castro says Barcelona have not made an offer for defender Mariano but confirmed the club will consider selling Yevhen Konoplyanka for the right price.

Barcelona saw Dani Alves leave for Juventus on a free transfer in the off-season, prompting suggestions they might seek to recruit another Brazilian right-back from Sevilla in the form of Mariano.

But the 30-year-old, who only moved to LaLiga from Bordeaux in July 2015, has not been the subject of a bid from the reigning champions.

“We don’t have any offer from Barcelona to sign Mariano,” Castro told a news conference.

Castro also claimed clubs are yet to make a bid for Ukraine international Konoplyanka, but acknowledged a suitor has made their interest known in rumoured Sunderland target Vicente Iborra.

“There aren’t offers for Konoplyanka,” he said.

“Our policy is [to] study all the offers that arrive to our office, we accept some of them and reject others. 

“We always sell if we receive an offer out of scale. We sold [Grzegorz] Krychowiak and [Kevin] Gameiro because we received disproportionate offers. We will value an offer for Konoplyanka, if we receive it.

“We have an important offer for Iborra. In this moment it isn’t clear if we will accept it and we will wait to see what happen in next days.”

As for their own activity in the transfer market, Castro claimed Sevilla are hopeful of bringing in Italy goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu from Paris Saint-Germain.

He added: “We’re searching for players that can help to our project. Sirigu is one of our options and we’re working on his signing.”

Sevilla, who began their league season under new head coach Jorge Sampaoli with a thrilling 6-4 victory at home to Espanyol, are away to Villarreal on Sunday.