In the latest big money move to China, long time Liverpool target Alex Teixeira has agreed to a 50 Million Euro move from Shakhtar Donetsk to Jiangsu Suning.
The 26-year-old seemed to be set for a move to the Premier League this season after a breakthrough season at Ukranian club Shakhtar Donetsk, where he scored 22 goals in the league and 4 goals in the Champions League.
However, the Brazilian has gone ahead and shocked everyone by signing for Chinese Super League side Jiangsu Suning for 50 million Euros, according to BBC.
The Premier League links
Liverpool FC were heavily interested in signing the player in the January transfer window, with Shakhtar claiming that they had rejected a 24 million pound bid from the Reds for Teixeira. Until now, it looked as though the move that couldn’t be pulled off in the January transfer window would come to a conclusion in the summer.
Apart from Liverpool, defending champions Chelsea were also initially rumored to be readying a move for Teixeira and he himself added further fuel to the fire by praising then manager Jose Mourinho.
“[Mourinho] is the world’s best. I’ll learn a lot. Hope he doesn’t leave Chelsea. I want to work with him and have great success,” he said, back in November.
The latest big money Chinese transfer
At Jiangsu Suning, Teixeira will find himself playing with compatriot and former Chelsea player Ramires and against the likes of Jackson Martinez, Fredy Guarin and Gervinho. All of these players have been brought in by the Chinese Super League in the January transfer window for a whopping combined price tag of 258.9 million Euros.
The fact that a number of these players are still capable of competing at the top level in Europe, but opted for a move to China, shows the kind of clout that the league has. As for Teixeira, he has made the move at the relatively young age of 26 despite interest from numerous big clubs in Europe. It will be interesting to see if this is a sign of things to come.
