Valery Karpin admits trying to sign Yury Zhirkov, explains Emenike transfer

Head coach of Spartak Moscow Valery Karpin revealed he had undertaken several attempts to sign Chelsea midfielder Yury Zhirkov and spoke about his teams new signings.

Yury Zhirkov spent the most prominent part of his Russian career at CSKA Moscow, who are Spartak’s main rivals.

«Zhirkov’s transfer to Spartak was impossible. I’ve talked to Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich three times – and three times he told me that Yura won’t join Spartak for certain reasons.»

«Rojo and Pareja have apologized to the club for their late return. However, that doesn’t relieve them from paying a fine of 50-percent of their monthly wage. Still, money is money, but I’m sure that the most severe punishment for a football player is to remain without playing practice.»

«Welliton is surely not for sale, even if Germans insisted on his signing. The topic is closed.»

«Emenike will strengthen the competition in our attack and will allow us to feel more confident in case someone of our forwards gets injured. However, we didn’t sign Emenike just because he was available at that time. We’d been following the Nigerian for a long time, since 2010, watched him very closely this April, but in May Fenerbahce intercepted him from Karabukspor. While we were looking for other options, the club decided to sell him due to the match fixing scandals in Turkey. As far as I understand, the Turks fear losing their professional status, when the players would be allowed to leave free of charge. So we benefitted from this situation,» Karpin said to Sovetsky Sport.