Report: West Ham consider Mavropanos worth €25 million
German footballing magazine Kicker cites English media sources to claim that West Ham United are prepared to make it worth VfB Stuttgart's while on a potential transfer of defender Konstantinos Mavropanos.
A reported €3 million purchase clause for Greek defender Konstantinos Mavropanos hasn't technically even been pulled yet and there are already reported of a big EPL club preparing to invest a tidy sum in the 24-year-old defender.
German footballing magazine Kicker cites an unnamed English media source making a claim that German football's latest scalp West Ham United wants to fork over a large amount of capital to wrest Mavropanos away from his adopted home in Germany back to the Premiership.
A transfer figure of €25 million is cited. During his stay in Stuttgart, Mavropanos has pumped up his market value from from €2.5 million to €17 million.
Naturally, things get very complicated now. Mavropanos, contractually, remains the property of Arsenal F.C. While it has never really been in question that Stuttgart will automatically get the Greek international for €3 million if they remain in the league, the purchase is optional (and presumably veto-ready) for Arsenal if Stuttgart get relegated.
Stuttgart square off against VfL Wolfsburg this weekend. Relegation rivals Hertha BSC, away at Bielefeld, have a chance to put safety for the Swabians out of reach with a win and a Stuttgart loss. The VfB could then still avoid the drop via the promotion-relegation playoffs.
Even if the class is maintained, Sven Mislintat and the Stuttgart administrative team could hardly consider the opportunity to flip the player for such a large sum an offer worth refusing.