Felix Tainta broke his long silence on Thursday, telling the Spanish podcast Los Fulanos that Williams would have been exposed to Barcelona’s internal problems without the guarantees his camp wanted.
Nico Williams, 24, had been widely expected to sign for Barcelona in July 2025 before pivoting to a long-term renewal at his boyhood club, as Al Jazeera reported at the time. The reversal ended one of Europe’s most watched transfer sagas, and Tainta’s version is the first full account of what tipped the balance.
‘A Formula 1 driver can’t absorb your problems’
Tainta framed the collapse as a matter of career protection, not a snub.
“If certain guarantees weren’t in place, we couldn’t risk Nico going there and not playing,” he said on the podcast, with a World Cup only a year away at the time.
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He said Athletic were kept in the loop throughout.
“We were talking to Barça; logically Athletic knew, because I kept them informed at all times.”
His bluntest line compared his client to a top-end athlete with no margin for a dysfunctional environment.
“He is a Formula 1 driver, and if I come to your house, I don’t have to take on your problems.”
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From Camp Nou to a 10-year renewal
Tainta said that once the assurances failed to materialize, he put a different option to his client.
“‘What if I renew?’ I raise it with him, he agrees, and from there we decide to extend.”
Athletic Club announced the extension on 4 July 2025, tying Williams to the Basque side through 2035 and raising his release clause by 50 percent, an eight-year addition that ESPN ranked among the longest active contracts in the game.
Williams himself did not mention Barcelona when the deal was unveiled.
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“When you have to make decisions, for me what matters most is the heart. I am where I want to be, with my people, this is my home,” he said in Athletic’s statement.
A queue that did not matter
Tainta used the same appearance to list the clubs that, on his telling, had shown real interest over the past two seasons: Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Arsenal and Liverpool.
“Everyone wanted Nico, and it’s not easy for a player to say no to all these clubs,” the agent said, before adding that none of the alternatives changed his assessment of the Barcelona offer.
The agent’s wording leaves a question open about any future transfer window: his argument was not that Williams never wanted to leave, but that the specific terms on offer did not fit. For now the contract Athletic signed in July 2025 still runs for another nine seasons.
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