- Diego Costa’s final six months of his Atletico Madrid deal have been terminated
- The 32-year-old will now be allowed to join any club as a free agent from Friday
- Mental Health and Psychosocial considerations during the COVID-19
Atletico Madrid have terminated Diego Costa’s contract at the Spanish side, allowing him to move as a free transfer for the January transfer window.
Arsenal and Juventus are thought to be among the clubs who will be keen to snap up the veteran striker when the window opens on Friday.
After falling down the pecking order under Diego Simeone, Costa is understood to have instructed Atletico to tear up his contract which had just six months to run, with the striker picking up £270,000-a-week.
Costa was given permission to miss training on Monday as he sought to leave the club over ‘personal reasons’.
He remains convinced he can still compete at the top in Europe for around ‘two or three seasons’ and his sudden availability as a free agent is likely to make him hot property in the transfer window.
Despite Costa now being a free agent, he can only move when the transfer window reopens having been under contract at Madrid for the first half of the season. However, he will not be tied down to any deadline and would still be free to move to a new side after January if by then he has still not signed for a new team.
The 32-year-old has struggled for minutes and injuries this term, with leg and muscle injuries seeing him miss six out of seven LaLiga games from the end of October to the middle of December while those same problems kept him out of Champions League action.
The arrival of Suarez from Barcelona over the summer pushed Diego Costa further away from Simeone’s radar, who favoured his exit on Tuesday.
