Thibaut Courtois joined Real Madrid to be closer to his children and he missed Chelsea training due to ‘stress’, his agent has claimed.
Christophe Henrotay was speaking about the Belgian international’s €35m switch to the European champions, which was completed last week.
“If his family had been in London it would all have been different; he would have stayed there,” Henrotay explained on BBC Radio 5.
“There would have been no reason to leave a club like Chelsea, where he had the opportunity to continue winning important titles.
“Unfortunately, his children live with their mother in Madrid. It was entirely down to personal reasons and that has to be respected.
“Chelsea understood the situation and enabled the deal to happen.
“Missing training? The deal was on the verge of going through, in an ideal world it would have been better not to have done that but the situation was as it was.
“He later apologised and all the parties were satisfied.
“It’s true that some players force moves and it’s also the case that Thibaut was under a lot of stress over the situation because Real Madrid had made an offer and he had the opportunity to go. He suffered stress because he thought it wasn’t going to go through.”
