Real Betis sports chief Ramon Planes has welcomed new signing Sokratis.

The Greece defender joins Betis as a free agent after penning terms to June.

Planes explained, “With the departure of Luiz Felipe and (Marc) Bartra's injury we had emergencies because there was a significant risk. The market for free players is very difficult because finding a player who can contribute to a club with the demands of Betis is not easy.

"We had marked Sokratis as one of the fundamental options due to his experience and because he was a player who played a lot with Olympiakos last year. That gave us guarantees that he is coming to contribute.

“Either it was Sokratis or it was nobody. Obviously we had other options but we did not consider them because they did not convince us. There are many very important teams with centre-back problems, from Napoli to Bayern Munich. Sokratis got complicated because other teams appeared, but the insistence and work made it happen."