Zenit St Petersburg have made a €40m raid on Benfica to sign Belgian play-maker Axel Witsel.
The loss of Witzel is a massive blow to Benfica who also lost Javi Garcia to Manchester City for £15.
Russian clubs have a transfer window that remains open to Thursday giving them free reign to sign players with Benfica helpless to sign any replacements.
In a double raid on Portugese football Zenit also signed Hulk from Porto in a €40m with the double deal emphasising that Russian football has the financial power to outbid the riches on offer in Spain and England.
Chelsea have long been linked with a move for Hulk but couldn’t match the fee offered by Zenit or the five year contract to lure the 26-year-old Brazilian striker.
The only consolation for Benfica is that they turned down a triple bid of €90m from Anzhi for Witsel, Rodrigo and Nicolás Gaitan.
Anzhi were willing to pay €35m for Witsel but the Benfica board opted to take the €40m on offer from Zenit while holding on to Rodrigo and Gaitan.
After losing Garcia Benfica boss Jesus Jorge said: “We have solutions for his position in our B team, Andre Almeida and Andrew Gomes will be the future of this club but that takes time.
“Our system doesn’t change, only the players names, we work to develop our players and they know what is expected when they replace Javi in the team.”
With Witsel gone Jorge must rethink his midfield with Champions League ties against Celtic and Barcelona less than a month away.
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I thought it was interesting that the Benfica manager said: “Our system doesn’t change, only the players names, we work to develop our players and they know what is expected…”
Maybe we could learn something from that. We seem to change our system for every game, and, at the back, we do get a lot of confusion.
Well seen as theyve lost these two guys then its gonna be a dawdle!! I think not, hardly a huge bonus to Celtic but it will probably give Kelvin & Co a few less nightmares in the lead up to the opening game of the CL… HH!
When someone comes chappin your door wanting 2 players 6o million Euro’s plus the 20+ million for being in the CL group stage, its a no brainer. They’ll feel they have what it takes to progress anyway no doubt so fair play to them. A lot to be said about the Portuguese youth development system. Probably the best in the world. They will be very difficult to beat non the less but all good with regards to the Hoops. HH NL
It will be interesting to see how uefa regulate the financial fair play rules with Zenit splashing this cash