General Director of “Shakhtar” Sergey Palkin commented the words of the head coach Mircea Lucescu on the cancelled transition of the Armenian midfielder Henrik Mkhitaryan to “Zenit” (St. Petersburg).
“The leaders of the” Zenith” just interested in Mkhitaryan by a phone conversation. There were no official papers. We did not even come to discuss prices of Mkhitaryan. And Henrik himself never said he wanted to move to the “Zenith”. How many calls were there? I had one call. Maybe they called also Lucesc. I haven’t talked with him on this issue. “Shakhtar” is willing to negotiate on any footballer. The main thing is to satisfy all the parties. Of course, we do not want to lose Mkhitaryan. But if tomorrow one club comes and says, “Here’s a 40 million euro!” I said this as an example. Taking into account for how much the “Zenith” buy players, 40 million is not an amount!” – said Palkin.
Recall that not so long ago “Zenith” paid 100 million Euros for Hulk and Axel Witzel.