Atletico Madrid have entered the race to sign Caglar Soyuncu, hoping to steal him away from heavily-linked Arsenal, according to reports in Spain.

AS (via TuttoMercatoWeb) report that Atletico are ready to do battle with Arsenal for the player, who has a number of admirers at this stage. Soyuncu is currently with SC Freiburg, and has spent the last few weeks on holiday after completing his international duties before the World Cup began.

The longer the Soyuncu transfer drags on, the more it starts to seem like his representatives were just using Arsenal’s name to try and generate interest in their client. The transfer was supposed to be done in early June, then before the World Cup, then most recently we were told ‘early July’.

A week and a half into July there’s still no progress whatsoever, other than more clubs entering the race for him.

Arsenal have completed a number of deals over the summer already, including reportedly closing in on Lucas Torreira, despite his World Cup participation. There’s no reason they couldn’t have made steps to close a Soyuncu deal too, if it were really on the cards.

The club look much more likely to use internal solutions for the centre-back position, promoting the likes of Calum Chambers, Rob Holding and Konstantinos Mavropanos to more consistent starting roles. We’ll see.