Jermaine Jenas Exclusive: China's millions are tempting, but I don't regret not going

Chinese clubs have made some eye-catching signings recently, with top players like Ramires, Jackson Martinez and now Alex Teixeria making big-money moves to the Far East, despite the fact that the standard of football still lags way behind Europe's top leagues. I know how persuasive those offers can be, because I received one myself.

It was January 2013, when I was at a Queens Park Rangers team chasing promotion, that I got the call from Guangzhou Evergrande. Sven-Goran Eriksson was their manager at the time and I had a good chat with him on the phone about it. (To be clear it was all above board - there was no tapping up!) And I admit, I was interested. The opportunity to work with Sven again was part of the reason, but the vast majority of my motivation was financial.

The offered me £2.5m a year net, which with the tax taken into consideration was a huge hike on what I could earn in England. It was tempting.

In an ideal world, did I want to go all the way to China and drag my family out there with me? No. In fact I probably wouldn't have taken them. So did I want to be away from my family for large periods of time? Obviously not.

Plus, I still had two or three more years left in me in the Premier League or Championship.

(Four months later I suffered a knee injury that would end my career, but I didn't know that at the time.)

I also didn't know much about the place or the league, and that was a worry. The only Premier League players who had gone out there at that stage were Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka, and they didn't stay long.

But Guangzhou looked like a lovely city - it was explained to me as "the closest you can get to a European city in China" - and it was a very good offer. So I gave my agent the green light to go ahead. Two or three years out there earning that kind of money, I thought why not.

In the end, it didn't happen. Guangzhou had a player in their squad - I'm not sure who it was, I think he was Brazilian - who got a bad injury and then refused to leave the club, despite their efforts to pay him off. Because there was a limit on the amount of foreign players they could have, the move fell through.

But weirdly, I wasn't disappointed about it. Rather I felt an almost overwhelming sense of relief. The financial package sounded great, but in reality I think it would have been very tough for me.

[ALEX TEIXEIRA WANTED PREMIER LEAGUE MOVE, BUT CHINA TOO GOOD TO TURN DOWN]

If you want to make your mark as a footballer, you think England, Germany, Italy, Spain. Maybe France or Holland. But not China, not the Middle East.

I was 31 when I got the Guangzhou offer. Any earlier in my career and it would have been a definite no. I remember at Spurs when Giovani dos Santos couldn't get in our team, and he got an offer from the Far East. I can't recall exactly what he was offered but the figures were astronomical. Gio had no interest in it though. He was a young man and he knew that deal would probably always be there if he wanted it.

That's how most players see it, but the times seem to be changing, because more players are moving to China when they are still in, or close to, their prime. I think 90 per cent of players are still pursuing dreams of league titles and cups, but there is also a huge percentage of very good players who are strictly money motivated.

For what it's worth, I don't include Ramires in that. I think the Brazilian was slightly undervalued at Chelsea, where some of his team-mates earned a lot more than him. He's won pretty much everything there is to win at Stamford Bridge, so it's hard to blame him for now wanting to go somewhere where he can earn top money.

Admittedly footballers probably don't need that money - not the successful ones anyway - but it can be hard to turn down. Fabio Cannavaro, Xavi, Raul... they certainly weren't short of cash, but it didn't stop them going to Dubai or Doha. It doesn't really matter how much you've got saved up in your bank account. If someone offers you £10 million to play football for a year in a beautiful part of the world, who would turn that down?

I don't want to undermine the Chinese league, because they are just attempting to make themselves a force in the game, but in terms of footballing history, whatever you do there will be pretty much forgotten.

There are a lot of players who still see it like that. A good friend of mine Aaron Lennon, for example, had an offer to earn big money in Dubai but he loves the Premier League and that's where he sees his career. Personally, I think that's the way it should be, but it didn't stop my head being turned.

A few months before the Guangzhou call I had an offer to move to a Premier League club, but I turned it down because I'd just had a little girl and it made sense to stay where I was and try to get QPR back into the top flight following relegation. But when the China offer came along, which was a lot more lucrative, I wondered whether I would be stupid to turn it down.

That's an example of how the money on offer can distort the reality of the situation. I expect it would be the same in any walk of life. If someone offers to double your wages you feel obliged to give it serious consideration, and find ways to justify taking it. When I got the China offer, I told myself it would just be two or three years out of my life, then I could come back. Not a huge amount of time in the grand scheme of things, but it would have been hard.

My wife said she would support my decision if I wanted to go, but I couldn't really ask her to up sticks to China, with issues like kids in school to consider. That's why I was relieved when it didn't come off. Who knows how damaging that could have been to our relationship, or how difficult things might have been when I came back.

As it is, I played 99 per cent of my football in the Premier League and I'd proud of that fact. That's where my history is. When I retired recently they sent me videos of my best moments, and I found comfort in those achievements. Playing in a league like China you would lose that, and in some ways you would also lose a bit of respect.