China club pay Shakhtar €50m for Teixeira

Liverpool target Alex Teixeira is set to move to Chinese club Jiangsu Suning, the midfielder’s manager at Shakhtar Donetsk has confirmed.

Shakhtar have accepted a transfer fee of ¬50 million to send Teixeira to Jiangsu Suning, boss Mircea Lucescu told ESPN Brazil.

Luscescu said Shakhtar would await to officially announce the move until the Brazilian had signed all his paperwork for his new club, after Luiz Adriano’s move from AC Milan to China fell apart after a fee had been agreed last month.

As recently as Wednesday, Lucescu had refuted reports that Teixeira would move to China and would stay with the Ukraine club for the rest of the season.

Liverpool had been eager to sign Teixeira during the January transfer window and the Brazilian said they had failed with a ¬32m bid for his services.

But Shakhtar executive Sergei Palkin suggested that offer had been way below his club’s asking price as he confirmed that the forward has a ¬70m release clause in his contract.

Liverpool shelved their efforts to sign the player, with boss Jurgen Klopp saying he felt his club’s offer had been “realistic.”

The ¬50m fee is reportedly a record paid for a player by any Asian club, breaking the mark set on Tuesday when Guangzhou Evergrande signed striker Jackson Martinez from Atletico Madrid for ¬42m.

Jiangsu Suning has already spent £25m to buy Ramires from Chelsea this year, while Fredy Guarin and Gervinho also moved to China in the winter transfer window.

Sources have told ESPN FC that PSG’s Ezequiel Lavezzi is also lining up a move to China, as the transfer window there remains open until Feb. 26.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.