Real Football Man All of the Football, All of the time
Chinese Football grabs the headlines again this Week with Alex Teixeira the latest player to join the apparent Far East gold rush. The Brazilian Midfielder has joined Jiangsu Suning for an astonishing £38.4m from Shakhtar Donetsk.
The 26 year old was reportedly linked with a move to Liverpool but the Merseyside club were not prepared to meet Shakhtar’s valuation of the player, Jiangsu Suning had no such reservations and this move has taken their spending above £55m in the past week as Teixeira will now link up with compatriot Ramires who was signed from Chelsea for a fee of £25m.
It seems to be a case of “Anything you can do, I can do better” in China at the moment with this being the third time the transfer record has been broken in a week, first there was the aforementioned Ramires move which was then trumped the signing of Jackson Martinez by Guangzhou Evergrande for £31m but both those deals have been blown out the water by this latest offering.
This deal puts Teixeira in the Top 30 most expensive transfers of all time, considering this is someone who hasn’t even got a Brazilian cap that is a considerable outlay and a fantastic piece of business by the Ukrainian giants Shakhtar Donetsk.
Again much criticism will be pointed at players such as Martinez and Teixeira for moving to China for a bumper pay day than opposed to testing themselves in a top European League but with the money they are set to earn I doubt they really care.
Edit: I didn’t copy The Sun’s headline, I thought of this one the night before that and I don’t even read The Sun. Read my blog it’s better
