{"id":657453,"date":"2025-07-29T13:01:26","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T17:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=657453"},"modified":"2025-07-30T05:38:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T09:38:13","slug":"deal-complete-international-star-signs-for-sunderland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/07\/29\/deal-complete-international-star-signs-for-sunderland\/","title":{"rendered":"Deal Complete: International Star Signs For Sunderland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunderland have today completed the signing of Switzerland international midfielder Granit Xhaka from Bayer Leverkusen. The former Arsenal star has cost the Black Cats a reported fee of $13 million with a further $4 million in add-ons. He has signed a three-year deal on Wearside. The transfer was confirmed by the official Sunderland website, safc.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Title winner Xhaka is Sunderland\u2019s seventh signing of the summer as they transform their squad ahead of the new Premier League season.<\/p>\n

Deal Complete: Star Midfielder Granit Xhaka Signs For Sunderland<\/b><\/h2>\n

Switzerland captain, FA Cup and Bundesliga winner Granit Xhaka, has completed his move from German giants Bayer Leverkusen to Premier League new boys Sunderland.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Xhaka, capped 137 times by his country, flew to England on Monday evening before undergoing his medical on Tuesday and being confirmed as a Sunderland player on Wednesday. The move sees the midfielder return to England. He played 297 for Arsenal before signing for Bayer, where he helped them win a historic Bundesliga title.<\/p>\n

The deal takes Sunderland\u2019s spending to over \u00a3110 million, and that the figure is likely to increase as the Black Cats look to build a squad not just capable of surviving but to compete with the best in the league.<\/p>\n

Granit Xhaka on Move to Sunderland<\/h3>\n

Sunderland’s new signing spoke about his move to the club. He said<\/a>: “I\u2019m very proud to be here. When I spoke to the Club, I was excited and I felt the energy, and the mentality that all the people and players have.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s exactly what I wanted, and I have a very good feeling. We are back to where this Club needs to be, and we want to stay here to write our own history. I feel that I\u2019m ready to help the team with my experience but with quality as well. We need to find ourselves on the pitch, but I don\u2019t think this will be a big problem. It\u2019s been a long time to wait, but I\u2019m here now and I\u2019m looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunderland have today completed the signing of Switzerland international midfielder Granit Xhaka from Bayer Leverkusen. The former Arsenal star has cost the Black Cats a reported fee of $13 million with a further $4 million in add-ons. He has signed a three-year deal on Wearside. The transfer was confirmed by the official Sunderland website, safc.com […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":632857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31833,4,30,3,22,28],"tags":[380,7388,6579],"class_list":["post-657453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bayer-leverkusen","category-bundesliga","category-news","category-premier-league","category-sunderland","category-transfers","tag-granit-xhaka","tag-sunderland-news","tag-sunderland-transfer-news"],"modified_by":"Barry Dixon, LWOF Site Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657453"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657472,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657453\/revisions\/657472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}