Nico Williams has, in his own words, nothing more to add. The Athletic Club winger told Goal, in an interview published on 26 October, that nobody had held a gun to his head over the summer, that he never doubted he wanted to stay in Bilbao, and that he personally turned down the clubs who came for him.

“Whether it was Barca or other clubs like PSG, Arsenal and many others, I said ‘no’ to everyone to stay here,” Williams told Goal.

Williams contradicts his own agent

The intervention cuts across a very public account from Félix Tainta, who had told Spanish outlets that Barcelona’s inability to guarantee Williams would be registered under LaLiga’s financial fair play rules was the decisive factor in the collapse of a Camp Nou move.

Tainta compared his client to “a Formula 1 car” that could not be driven into another team’s financial problems, and said approaches had come in from Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and PSG as well, according to Sports Illustrated.

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Williams disagreed, flatly, when he was asked about those comments.

“Felix was wrong in his words, things are not like that.”

Williams framed the choice as a family decision taken with his brother Iñaki and his parents, not a negotiation that fell over on paperwork.

A deal at San Mamés until 2035

The backdrop is a contract that already settled the question in writing. Williams signed an eight-year extension on 4 July 2025 that keeps him at Athletic Club until 2035 and, as Al Jazeera reported at the time, increased his release clause by 50 per cent.

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That deal was signed in the middle of the Barcelona saga, and its length was itself read as a message to the clubs circling him after Euro 2024.

Williams has now underlined that reading himself and brushed off the online churn that followed Tainta’s remarks, telling Goal that social media is not real life.

The Barcelona interest, as Tainta confirmed to Spanish media, dated back to the summer after Euro 2024, when Williams was one of the most pursued wingers in the European market. The current contract runs until 2035, at the club where he grew up and where his older brother Iñaki still plays.

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