Stoke City's £12 million bid for Xherdan Shaqiri was accepted by Inter Milan, but the deal died with the player.

Mark Hughes went to meet with Shaqiri, but was unable to convince him to join the club.

“We had conversations and I went out to meet the boy,” he told the Stoke Sentinel. “We were able to have good conversations but in the end it wasn’t to be. It was important we were able to establish that enthusiasm to sense from the player and his people. We got to a point where didn’t sense that. As far as I’m aware [it’s dead]. We may revisit it but if I’m honest it’s probably one that has gone away from us.”

Shaqiri has subsequently been linked with a move to Schalke but the club director Horst Heldt told the German newspaper Bild that a deal was far from complete.

“He’s a player that’s on the market with excellent qualities,” Heldt said. “A club like ours had to verify if an operation of this kind was feasible. Shaqiri could come to us, but it is not a certainty he will arrive, we are not yet at the end of the negotiations.”