Exclusive | Borussia Dortmund’s Axel Witsel has no regrets over China move as BVB prepare for PSG game coronavirus has forced behind closed doors
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“I signed for three years and I was thinking in my head, ‘OK, I will do three years in China and then I will come back to Europe.’ But in the end I stayed just a year and a half.
“You never know in football,” Witsel said, adding he left Benfica for Zenit after just a year despite signing a five-year deal in Lisbon.
Tianjin Quanjian were not the only team interested. “I was speaking to Shanghai SIPG at that time because [Andre] Villas-Boas was there. He was my coach in Zenit. I had contact with him but nothing really serious.” SIPG is also the club of his “brother” and former Zenit teammate Hulk.
Did the Belgium midfielder not fear he was damaging his international career moving to China?
“I didn’t think about that when I moved. Before I chose to go there I called my coach [Roberto] Martinez and told him, ‘I have decided to move to China, I will do everything to stay fit, you still can count on me for the national team.’