T&T se­nior men’s foot­ball team cap­tain Levi Gar­cia ru­moured trans­fer away from Greece League and Cup cham­pi­ons AEK Athens will not take place this sum­mer af­ter he put pen to pa­per on a new five-year deal with his club on im­proved terms.

This was af­ter re­ports in Greece that Scot­tish Pre­mier­ship cham­pi­ons Celtic’s re­port­ed in­ter­est in the 28-year-old T&T strik­er were dashed when he signed a con­tract ex­ten­sion with his cur­rent em­ploy­ers on Wednes­day.

And the news was con­firmed on the clubs’ so­cial me­dia ac­count which said, Levi Gar­cia has re­newed his con­tract with AEK Athens FC for a fur­ther five years, un­til the end of the 2027/28 sea­son. Up­on sign­ing his new con­tract, Gar­cia said “Sign­ing my new con­tract with AEK is some­thing very im­por­tant for me. We had amaz­ing mo­ments last sea­son win­ning the dou­ble. We have very great match­es ahead of us and we have to con­tin­ue the suc­cess­es and ex­pe­ri­ence great mo­ments again. On­ly AEK!”

Celtic was first linked with Gar­cia back in April of this year af­ter re­ports sug­gest­ed that the Scot­tish club was keep­ing tabs on the for­mer FC San­ta Rosa play­er.

Athens at that time had claimed that the strik­er was not for sale, but the spec­u­la­tion con­tin­ued af­ter the Greek side’s own­er ap­peared to sug­gest that a de­ci­sion will be made on his fu­ture af­ter the club’s Cham­pi­ons League group stage qual­i­fiers.

The sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped fur­ther in Ju­ly when AEK re­ject­ed a €22m bid from Ligue 1 side RC Lens, their sec­ond at­tempt at se­cur­ing the play­er, af­ter a bid of €18.5m was turned down, as they re­it­er­at­ed their ‘not for sale’ pledge to the French team.

The new deal for Gar­cia is ru­moured to dou­ble his cur­rent salary to €1.2m per sea­son in­clu­sive of bonus­es, mak­ing him one of the club’s high­est earn­ers.

Celtic’s in­ter­est in Gar­cia prob­a­bly end­ed the minute AEK set an ask­ing price of €15m (£13.15m) back in May.

So far this pre-sea­son Gar­cia has been in fine form for the Greek out­fit, scor­ing six goals in four match­es.

Last Sun­day, the T&T cap­tain scored and al­so missed a penal­ty in a 3-1 win over Turkey’s Su­per League out­fit Tra­b­zon­spor 3-1 at Senol Gunes Sta­di­um, in Tra­b­zon, Türkey for their fourth win on the trot af­ter los­ing their open­er against Croa­t­ia’s NK Lo­co­mo­tive Za­greb on Ju­ly 4.

On Ju­ly 13, Gar­cia scored a hat-trick in his team’s 5-0 trash­ing of Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donet­sk with An­go­la’s Zi­ni scor­ing the two oth­er goals in the 83rd, and 86th.

Then on Ju­ly 23, AEK Athens blanked do­mes­tic ri­vals Vo­los 3-0 with Gar­cia net­ting an ear­ly brace in the 15th and 21st min­utes, and Theo­dosis Macheras, the oth­er on the hour mark.

AEK is set to be­gin de­fence of its Stoix­i­man Su­per League ti­tle on Au­gust 19 at home to Pane­to­likos.

Last sea­son, Gar­cia had a good year for AEK with 18 goals scored in 37 games in all com­pe­ti­tions, to fin­ish sec­ond in the ‘Gold­en Boot’ race to Olympia­cos’ Cedric Bakam­bu of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Con­go by four goals.

He has now scored 32 in all com­pe­ti­tions in three sea­sons with the Greek cham­pi­ons hav­ing joined the club for around £ 1.9 mil­lion from Is­rael’s Beitar Jerusalem in 2020.

Among the oth­er clubs to have shown an in­ter­est in Gar­cia are Wolfs­burg and Stuttgart, both of Ger­many, Span­ish duo Re­al So­ciedad, and Vil­lar­real, Bologna of Italy, and Por­tuguese pow­er­hous­es SL Ben­fi­ca, and Sport­ing Lis­bon.

Last May, the T&T strik­er com­plet­ed the do­mes­tic dou­ble in the 2022/2023 Greece Foot­ball sea­son when they blanked PAOK FC 2-0 fi­nal of the Greece Novi­bet Cup fi­nal.