Twente’s Elia demands transfer

Forward Eljero Elia has demanded Twente chairman Joop Munsterman allows him to leave the club. Ajax are willing to pay €8m for the player, and German club Hamburg slightly more, but Munsterman has refused to budge so far.

“Joop blocks everything and I get angrier by the day with how things are going,” Elia told AD Sportwereld. “It was Munsterman who made sure last winter, personally, that I would stay for the rest of the season.

“In exchange for my co-operation he would co-operate in my transfer this summer – I could go to a club of my choice. Joop said that literally. In the second half of the season he repeated himself regularly.

“When we won a big game, like for instance in the UEFA Cup, he cuddled me and said, ‘Now you help Twente and in the summer we will help you to get a nice transfer’.”

Munsterman responded by claiming Elia was jeopardising his future with his comments. “We are busy trying to deliver him to HSV, and it can be possible that we will have an agreement later today,” he said this morning.

“But with this directed story he sabotages his own transfer. That I would have told him after a good UEFA Cup match that we would help him is untrue. You can’t promise such a thing, can you?”