New­ly crowned Greek cham­pi­ons AEK Athens has named their ask­ing price for Celtic FC tar­get, and T&T ‘So­ca War­riors’ strik­er Levi Gar­cia of €15m, ac­cord­ing to a re­port, which should a club agree to pay will be­come the high­est trans­fer for a T&T play­er by any club.

For­mer T&T World Cup cap­tain, Dwight Yorke still holds the high­est fee to date of £12.6m paid by Eng­lish gi­ants Man­ches­ter Unit­ed for his ser­vices from As­ton Vil­la in 1998 fol­low­ing an eye-catch­ing and me­dia-heavy trans­fer saga, just weeks af­ter the club had paid a then-record fee for Hol­land de­fend­er Jap Stam (£10.75m) to PSV Eind­hoven af­ter his star­ring role at the 1998 World Cup, as the Nether­lands nar­row­ly missed out on a place in the fi­nal.

An­oth­er for­mer T&T strik­er and cap­tain Ken­wyne Jones has the sec­ond-high­est trans­fer fee for a lo­cal play­er af­ter he left Sun­der­land in 2010 for Stoke City for a club-record fee of £8 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, the Scot­tish Sun­Sport re­vealed last month that Scot­tish Pre­mier League cham­pi­ons Celtic FC coach Ange Postecoglou was keep­ing tabs on Gar­cia who led his club to the Greek Su­per League ti­tle on Sun­day.

The pro­lif­ic for­ward, who has 18 goals to his name dur­ing the 2023 cam­paign, has been reg­u­lar­ly scout­ed by the Hoops this year as the for­mer Soc­ceroos boss pre­pares to add at­tack­ing re­in­force­ments to his squad.

Stand­ing at six feet tall, the pow­er­ful hit­man looks set to leave AEK at the end of the sea­son with over 14 teams, in­clu­sive of Wolfs­burg and Stuttgart, both of Ger­many, Span­ish duo Re­al So­ciedad, and Vil­lar­real, Bologna of Italy, and Por­tuguese pow­er­hous­es SL Ben­fi­ca, and Sport­ing Lis­bon all said to be in­ter­est­ed in the winger.

Re­spond­ing to the in­ter­est from sev­er­al clubs around the world Gar­cia said, “It is great to know that your hard work is re­al­ly pay­ing off be­cause every­one is recog­nis­ing you. To be hon­est, it is some­thing that I had to put aside be­cause I had my goals and I had to stay fo­cused on the team and my­self, but there’s noth­ing con­firmed. If there’s some­thing in the fu­ture that I re­al­ly and tru­ly can­not refuse I would like to go, but so far it’s been ru­mours and what’s not, it’s re­al­ly ex­cit­ing to see and hope­ful­ly the best de­ci­sion will be made.”

Gar­cia joined the Greek side for around £ 1.9 mil­lion from Is­rael’s Beitar Jerusalem in 2020, still has two years re­main­ing on his cur­rent deal.

It’s be­ing sug­gest­ed by Sportime jour­nal­ist Gi­an­nis Cho­ri­anopou­los that the Greek gi­ants are hold­ing out for around € 15 mil­lion for the play­er, leav­ing a deal for Celtic un­like­ly.

Cho­ri­anopou­los tweet­ed: “AEK Athens will not con­sid­er any of­fer for their strik­er Levi Gar­cía, for less than €15m.”

It’s un­der­stood that Gar­cia, who has eight goals in 36 ap­pear­ances for T&T, has been eyed as a po­ten­tial re­place­ment for Liel Aba­da, whose fu­ture at Park­head re­mains un­cer­tain. The 21-year-old Is­raeli winger has been linked with a host of clubs this sea­son in­clud­ing Pre­mier League and Por­tuguese teams.

Last Sun­day, Gar­cia, 25, as­sist­ed on his team’s third goal for Or­be­lin Pine­da as AEK Athens trounced Vo­los FC 4-0 to clinch a 13th do­mes­tic league crown when the Stoix­i­man Greece Su­per League Cham­pi­onship Round Play­offs end­ed

Re­spond­ing to AEK Athens’ ti­tle suc­cess Gar­cia said, “I am re­al­ly, re­al­ly grate­ful, we worked re­al­ly, re­al­ly hard and I am thank­ful for it. I am tak­ing it one day at a time for it to re­al­ly kick in.”

Look­ing at his progress from Is­rael to Greece he ex­plained, “I have made a lot of de­ci­sions for my­self, I don’t re­al­ly lis­ten to what peo­ple think I should do. My move to Is­rael was a bad move to many but to me to catch my­self again and build my­self and my con­fi­dence and as you can see it re­al­ly paid off and things have just been go­ing up­wards since then.”

With re­gards to his form for the sea­son, he said, “I be­lieve that I have a lot more to of­fer be­cause I have worked re­al­ly hard and I will con­tin­ue to work hard so what­ev­er hap­pens in the near fu­ture is the best but I am an AEK Athens play­er and I will con­tin­ue my best to de­vel­op, to learn be­cause there’s al­ways room for im­prove­ment. This sea­son has been my best and I hope I can bet­ter this.”

Go­ing in­to their fi­nal match at their OPAP Are­na, Athens, Greece, AEK Athens led the ta­ble with 80 points from 35 match­es, three points ahead of Panathi­naikos, and on­ly need­ed a point to claim the ti­tle.

With the win, AEK fin­ished the sea­son with 83 points, while Panathi­naikos could on­ly muster a 1-1 draw at home to Aris at the Apos­to­los Niko­laidis Sta­di­um, in Athens to end five points adrift of the lead­ers as both teams qual­i­fied to the Eu­ro­pean Cham­pi­ons League.

Gar­cia, a res­i­dent of San­ta Flo­ra, in South Trinidad end­ed the sea­son by go­ing score­less in his last four match­es fin­ished the cam­paign with 14 league goals, and was in the sec­ond spot in the ‘Gold­en Boot’ race be­hind Olympia­cos’ Cedric Bakam­bu of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Con­go by four goals.

Gar­cia and his AEK Athens team­mates will now look to com­plete the do­mes­tic dou­ble when they con­test the Greece Novi­bet Cup fi­nal against PAOK on May 24.