OGC Nice sporting director Julien Fournier has reiterated that left-back Youcef Atal will not be sold but will rather continue his progress with the club.
The 24-year-old Algeria international has consistently been rumoured to potentially be on his way out of the French Riviera outfit with Real Madrid, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, Inter Milan and Napoli, some of the names attached to wanting his services.
Fournier has come out once again to say Atal will not be sold like products in a supermarket.
“No. We are not a supermarket. We do not put products in the window for people to use. We will do the season together,” he told Nice-Martin.
Atal himself had previously expressed interest in staying put at the Allianz Riviera for the foreseeable future, hoping to get more minutes for the upcoming campaign having spent the previous one much on the sidelines with injury.
“When you hear them [the rumours], it's nice because it's the reward for your work. If the big clubs are watching you, that means you're there. You exist”, Atal told L'Equipe.
"But I was focused on recovering from my injury and I am only thinking of having a good season here.
“Already, I haven't had a full second season and I have to do one with the Europa League, my first European Cup. I feel good here.”
Fournier went on to assert that Nice are still in the business of buying players having already purchased the likes of Franco-Algerian forward Amine Gouiri from Lyon, Swiss-Congolese right-back Jordan Lotomba and Franco-Gambian left-back Hassane Kamara.
"The hardest part is to gauge the state of mind of a player, his mentality. We did some stupid things on this point. This year, we've been obsessed with that,” Fournier continued.
“The objective is to prepare the club to perform. People think that with our eight recruits, we will play the first places automatically. What we want to acquire is the mental capacity to achieve it.
“With Patrick [Vieira], we established the list of players with whom we wanted to start the adventure. There are boys who expressed initial interests, others who were loaned out with an option to buy. We built the workforce based on that.”
Nice kick off their new season with a home tie against newly-promoted RC Lens on Sunday.