Ligue 1 side Marseille have confirmed the signing of Dimitri Payet from Premier League team West Ham United for a fee of £25 million.
The Frenchman has signed on a four-and-a-half year contract having passed a medical on Sunday evening and he will be presented on Monday.
☑️ @dimpayet17 est Olympien ! #DimitriEstOlympien
?? https://t.co/EIIXXv0MtL pic.twitter.com/oY1acNyPs4
— Olympique Marseille (@OM_Officiel) January 29, 2017
A onetime fan favourite, Payet, stunned the Hammers early in January when he revealed he will no longer play for the club.
West Ham have accused him of showing a lack of “commitment and respect”, insisting they did not need to sell the player.
Joint-chairman David Sullivan said he wanted him to stay to “make an example” of him.
But Sullivan added that manager Slaven Bilic approved the sale in “the interests of squad unity”.
“The Club would like to place on record its sincere disappointment that Dimitri Payet did not show the same commitment and respect to West Ham United that the Club and fans showed him, particularly when it rewarded him with a lucrative new five-and-half-year deal only last year,” Sullivan revealed.
“I would like to make it clear that we have no financial need to sell our best players and that the decision to allow Payet to leave was in accordance with the wishes of the manager and the interests of squad unity.”
Payet left Marseille to join the Hammers in the summer of 2015 and he led them to seventh in the table, being named as the club’s Player of the Year and narrowly missing out to Riyad Mahrez in the PFA Player of the Year award in the process.
He signed a new five-and-a-half-year contract in February last year to make him the highest-paid player at the club following his excellent start to his career in the Premier League.
