Gallas is not reporting a bid. He is offering a view, shaped by his time at Arsenal and in the France squad, and his verdict is that any elite centre-back handed the chance to join Real Madrid is unlikely to say no.

Speaking to SeatPick, he framed Real Madrid as an institution that operates on a plane Arsenal cannot yet match.

“For me, even if their performances at the moment are not the best, and even if they haven’t won the biggest trophies recently, Madrid is Madrid, and I’m telling you, any player who has the opportunity to go to Madrid, they will try to go there, and you can’t blame them,” Gallas told SeatPick.

His argument is institutional, not personal. At the Bernabéu, the former defender said, the fans expect La Liga or the Champions League every season, a pressure that in his telling pulls at any top centre-back given the chance.

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No formal bid has been reported. The link to Madrid remains pundit speculation, built on earlier reports of Real Madrid interest and on Saliba’s standing as one of the Premier League’s most consistent defenders.

Saliba’s five-year deal was supposed to end this

Arsenal thought they had already dealt with the question. Saliba signed a new five-year contract on 30 September 2025, extending his previous 2027 deal all the way to the summer of 2030. The move was explicitly designed to fend off Madrid, who had been circling for months. His previous Arsenal salary was reported at £9.8m a year.

The defender himself has not slammed the door in the longer term. Speaking to Goal in November 2025, Saliba conceded that a club like Real Madrid is “always tempting”, before insisting his priority was winning trophies with Arsenal first.

That half-open door is what Gallas’s warning hangs on. Arsenal reporter Charles Watts has taken a similar view, telling football365 he was “sure” Saliba would “go at some point”, reasoning that the defender’s ties to the Emirates were not strong enough to anchor him for a career.

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Mourinho’s turn at the Bernabéu

Real Madrid’s pursuit now runs through José Mourinho, who returned to the club in June 2026 on a three-year deal through 30 June 2029, after Los Blancos finished second in La Liga and were knocked out of the Champions League by Bayern Munich.

Saliba is under contract until 2030. No approach has been tabled. Any move would have to break through the three and a half years still on his deal.

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