Arsenal have completed the signing of Bayer Leverkusen defender Piero Hincapi\u00e9 on an initial loan deal. The club agreed a loan fee of \u20ac6 million (\u00a35.2 million, $7 million) with Leverkusen, while reports differed on whether the \u20ac46 million purchase clause is optional or obligatory.<\/p>\n
After undergoing a medical in London, Hincapi\u00e9 put pen to paper on his Arsenal contract on Monday to become the eighth addition of what has been a busy transfer window for Mikel Arteta\u2019s side. The move follows William Saliba suffering an ankle injury in the warm-up against Liverpool.<\/p>\n
Sporting director Andrea Berta, discussing the acquisition, said: \u201cAt only 23, Piero already has significant experience, both in the Bundesliga and at international level. He is an intelligent defender with real strength and versatility. His performances in recent years for both club and country have been of a consistent high quality, and we are confident Piero will continue to grow this season and be an important player for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manager Mikel Arteta added: \u201cPiero has a real physical presence, with his versatility and tactical flexibility giving us strong added defensive options. He is a big character, with a very good combination of both youth and maturity. He will make our squad stronger and more competitive as we continue into this season.\u201d<\/p>\n
A left-sided defender by description, Hincapi\u00e9 is a natural centre back who has experience playing on the left of the back line, potentially offering an inverted full back option.<\/p>\n
Hincapi\u00e9 joins Cristhian Mosquera in reinforcing Arsenal\u2019s back line, but much of the club\u2019s transfer budget has been allocated further forward. Viktor Gy\u00f6keres became a headline signing with a \u00a363.5 million move from Sporting CP, and Eberechi Eze\u2019s \u00a367.5 million switch from Crystal Palace could be the most expensive if add-ons are met. Mart\u00edn Zubimendi, Noni Madueke, Christian N\u00f8rgaard and Kepa Arrizabalaga have also completed moves to Arsenal as Arteta continues to reshape his squad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Piero Hincapi\u00e9 has joined Arsenal on an initial loan, finalised after a medical in London. Transfer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[199,414,864,182],"class_list":["post-2379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-cristhian-mosquera","tag-eberechi-eze","tag-hincapie","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2384,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions\/2384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}