Eibar hailed Florian Lejeune as a “great player” in a Twitter message to Newcastle United on Tuesday morning.
The Spanish top-tier club paid tribute to the versatile defender, who can also play in midfield, after he completed a transfer to the north-east giants for a fee in the region of £8.7million.
Lejeune, 26, has put pen to paper on a five-year contract with Newcastle, which will keep him at the club until the summer of 2022.
Within minutes of the Premier League new boys announcing the Frenchman’s arrival on Tuesday morning, the official Twitter account of Eibar posted a message on the microblogging site to Newcastle acclaiming the signing of a “great player and a better person”.
. @NUFC You have signed a great player and a better person. Good luck @lejeune_floria! Bon courage! https://t.co/kBuV0BNIGM
— SD Eibar (@SDEibar) July 4, 2017
The classy touch came after extensive negotiations between the Magpies and the team who finished 10th in La Liga last season over the structure of the transfer.
Lejeune, formerly of Manchester City, has become Rafael Benitez’s second signing of the summer, following Christian Atsu’s £6.2m move from Chelsea in May.
He made a big impact in his single season at Eibar and was a mainstay of the team that punched above their weight to secure a top-half league finish with a 54-point tally.
Paris-born Lejeune is a former France Under-20 international. In 2015, he signed for Manchester City but was immediately loaned back to the Spanish second tier side Giron, before moving on to Eibar last summer.