Ilya Zabarnyi is set to join Paris Saint-Germain from Bournemouth, despite Tottenham Hotspur having a €70 million bid accepted by their Premier League rivals, Duncan Castles confirmed on the Transfers Podcast.
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Spurs went big for the Ukrainian centre-back but the player has ultimately forced the Cherries’ hand, with the Champions League winners now destined to capture the promising defender.
Speaking on the Transfers Podcast, in conjunction with FootballTransfers, Castles explained:
“Paris Saint-Germain are now confident of completing an agreement with Bournemouth for the transfer of the Ukraine centre-back. They’ve had an agreement with the 22-year-old for several months.
“Bournemouth have accepted a proposal of €70m from Tottenham, which would’ve been a club record fee. Owner Bill Foley has been pushing Bournemouth’s technical staff to achieve a club record for Zabarnyi.
“My understanding is their efforts to persuade the player to move to Tottenham instead of PSG have failed and the deal should go through now. He will join the European champions instead of the Europa League holders.
“They’ve lost Dean Huijsen, lost Milos Kerkez and lost Zabarnyi. There’s a big recruitment job to do there, although they have made a good signing at left-back in the French defender Adrien Truffert.”
Bournemouth denied by Saudi
Castles went on to explain that Nantes’ promising young defender Nathan Zeze was regarded as a possibility to replace Huijsen and Zabarnyi at Bournemouth, but a lavish bid from the Saudi Pro League denied them.
“Nathan Zeze was an option for Bournemouth as a replacement for those centre-backs they’ve lost to two top European clubs. It would’ve been interesting to see him in the Premier League given Bournemouth’s demonstrated ability to pick out top-level young centre-backs and given them a platform to develop.
“Instead, Zeze has joined newly promoted Saudi Pro League club NEOM for €20m. It’s not out of kilter for what he’s worth – it’s almost exactly the Expected Transfer Value (ETV) for the France U21 international. But the interesting thing is the salary there, which I understand to be close to €5m net for the 20-year-old. That’s more than five times he was offered at Villarreal, who were also interested in him.”
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