Stoke City have agreed a fee of £12m with Internazionale for Xherdan Shaqiri but have yet to discuss personal terms with the Swiss midfielder or establish if he would be interested in moving to the Britannia Stadium. The 23-year-old only joined the Serie A side in January, on a four-and-a-half-year contract, but could potentially be persuaded to swap Milan for Stoke, who showed an interest in him six months ago.
The Swiss international joined Inter from Bayern Munich, having spent three years at the Bundesliga club, saying that he was looking forward to some regular playing time after struggling to get into the Bayern midfield with players such as Franck Ribéry, Arjen Robben and Mario Götze blocking his way.
He added that two separate telephone conversations with the Inter manager, Roberto Mancini, had convinced him to join the Italian club instead of moving to the Premier League. “I immediately felt like I would be very important for him,” he said. “At my age, what interested me most was the chance to play regularly, which hadn’t happened a lot lately.”
Shaqiri played 15 league games, scoring one goal, in the second half of the season after arriving in the January window but the club are now looking to overhaul their squad and have already signed Geoffrey Kondogbia from Monaco and Miranda from Atlético Madrid with more players expected to join.
Stoke, who have turned down a bid of £7m for Steven Nzonzi, pulled off a shock move for Bojan Krkic last summer and the Spaniard settled well at the club, being one of their best players before suffering a season-ending injury in January.
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