It seems as though football fans will see no end to the spending powers of the clubs in the Chinese Super League. The latest subject of their big money bids has been Chelsea and Spain forward Diego Costa.
Chelsea is currently top of the table in the English Premier League, with Costa banging in 14 goals to be the current top goal scorer. However, hiss form has seen foreign clubs circle around Chelsea this January transfer window to try and bid for him.
In particular, Chinese club Tianjin Quanjian would reportedly be willing to pay around £80 million ($96.6 million) for the Spanish international. Recently, now former Zenit St. Petersburg midfielder Axel Witsel has been signed.
At least one Chinese club is willing to offer Costa massive wages of up to £30 million ($36.2 million) per season, effectively making him one of the world's highest paid athletes. This would put his weekly wages just a couple thousand off of one of the Chinese Super League' latest acquisitions, Carlos Tevez, who reportedly has wages of £615,000 ($742,000) a week.
Chelsea fans are now worried due to the fact that Costa has now been dropped from the squad to face last season's champion Leicester City. This decision stemmed from a heated argument Costa had with manager Antonio Conte, in which the latter reportedly told the former to "go to China." Due to injury, Costa has also not trained with his squad mates for the past days, according to Telegraph.
"Did I want to go?" Costa said in an interview with the BBC. "Yes, yes, I was about to leave, but not because of Chelsea."
However, Costa claims that he had changed his mind is now much happier with his current situation in England. It seems though that having as combustible a personality as one could have, he is once again low on morale.
Chelsea has expressed no intention of letting him go any time in the near future and are even hoping of extending his contract. However, if the situation does not get better, Costa could soon be out of Stamford Bridge, as his contract expires in 2019.
Watch some of Costa's footballing highlights in the video below: