Bayer Leverkusen deny Schurrle deal done

Ballack's testimonial game yesterday made for an innocuous yet rather coincidental situation with regard to the Schurrle negotiations. Voller and Mourinho were said to have met briefly afterwards, and based on accounts filtering out later, all hands pointed to a done deal.

Not surprisingly, twitter was abuzz in no time, with a number of Bundesliga journalists claiming a straight cash deal had been struck afterwards. Today, thanks to Bayer sporting director Rudi Voller, who has been anything but media-shy these past couple of weeks, it turns out all the talk from yesterday might've been kinda bogus after all.

The naturally eager German news outlets probably quizzed him about it, and so speaking to Deutsche Presseagentur, Voller had this to say last evening:

"I cannot confirm a transfer agreement.

Definitely, we have been in touch about it and we (Mourinho and I) have talked to each other about it. But there is nothing to reveal.

There is interest in the services of Andre Schurrle from Chelsea FC, but we will have to keep on waiting the progress of those next few days."

With KDB not keen on moving to Leverkusen next season and the latest from Germany indicating they'd homed in HSV's Son Heung-Min as a replacement, it didn't look like there was a lot holding up the Schurrle deal.

Nevertheless, this pours cold water on all suggestion of this being only a couple of signatures away from a done deal. For the amount of time Leverkusen have spent haggling with us, this really wasn't such a major deal even, to begin with. However, if we want him, it'll only last another couple of weeks, tops, if not, well, you can be sure the club are sizing up alternatives.