{"id":3533,"date":"2026-09-15T16:03:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T16:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/?p=3533"},"modified":"2026-09-15T16:03:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T16:03:59","slug":"perhaps-it-wasnt-the-right-club-ex-atletico-madrid-wonderkid-breaks-silence-on-nightmare-transfer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/?p=3533","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Perhaps it wasn&#8217;t the right club&#8217; &#8211; Ex-Atletico Madrid wonderkid breaks silence on nightmare transfer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"article-body\">\n<div>\n<p><span>Looking back at his sudden departure from Antwerp, Vermeeren acknowledges that things did not go to plan. Atletico paid \u20ac22 million (\u00a318.5m) for his services, a fee largely driven by the Belgian club&#8217;s financial difficulties at the time. The midfielder admits that the move to Spain was flawed from a sporting perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think I necessarily made bad decisions,&#8221; Vermeeren told <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nieuwsblad.be\/sport\/\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" data-affiliate-type=\"NONE\"><i><em>Het Nieuwsblad<\/em><\/i><\/a><span>. &#8220;Probably there were wrong decisions among them, but the circumstances, which few people are aware of, also played a part. Perhaps Atletico wasn&#8217;t the right club, but at the time it seemed the best option, and I fully supported it.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking back at his sudden departure from Antwerp, Vermeeren acknowledges that things did not go&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-laliga"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-2268112517-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportbulletin.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}