Stoke City interested in signing Xherdan Shaqiri from Bayern Munich

Stoke City have thrown their hat into the Xherdan Shaqiri sweepstakes.

The Bayern Munich winger, 23, has been rumoured to be on the way out of the club this month in search of more playing time, with Inter Milan, Juventus and Liverpool all said to be interested.

But it seems that trio will face competition from the Britannia Stadium, where Stoke City assistant manager Mark Bowen confirmed that the club has legitimate interest in signing the Swiss international winger.

"There is genuine interest because he is a fantastic player," Bowen told the BBC. "He wants to play regular first-team football."

He continued:

"Without any detriment to Stoke City, to get a player like him on board would be fantastic, but he has got many choices of what he wants to do, but we don't rule ourselves out.

"He's definitely on our list, but as you can imagine there is competition for a player of his ability."

Reports out of Italy claim that Inter are in pole position to sign the diminutive winger, but as is always the case with the transfer window, best practice is to wait until the player is holding up his new jersey to get excited about a transfer.