September 7 – The ongoing pandemic has left a big mark on the world of sports, in general, and football, in particular. When the lockdowns were still in full effect, the Football Association floated the idea of suspending the Premier League season completely – an idea rejected by several English football teams, considering that it would’ve pushed them to the brink of bankruptcy.
With the pandemic stopping pretty much everything but virtual sports this spring, massive holes started to appear in the budgets of most Premier League teams. This left clubs like Spurs with plenty of reasons to sign new players and perhaps smaller budgets to spend on them than in previous years. It created the expectation in many observers that this year’s transfer season was going to be pretty boring, with few – if any – spectacular transfers. Chelsea’s decision to sign Bayern Leverkusen’s Kai Havertz proves them wrong.
An €80m Deal
According to information obtained by Sky Sport Germany, Havertz is heading to Stamford Bridge after the two teams worked out the details of his transfer deal. An official announcement is still to be made but a few details have already emerged: apparently, the Blues will pay an initial fee of €80 million for the player, along with €20 million in various bonuses over the next few years, for a total of €100 million or £89 million, a record for the Fulham-based team.
Apparently, all the negotiations have been completed and all arrangements have been made for the 21-year-old German midfielder to head to the UK.
Kai Havertz
Born in June 1999 in Aachen, Germany, Havertz became a footballer earlier than most – he started playing the amateur team Alemannia Mariadorf where his grandfather served as a chairman. At the age of ten, he was signed by the second-division team Alemannia Aachen. After a year, he left the team to play with Bayern Leverkusen’s youth team.
As a youth, he played 20 matches with the German national team, scoring 16 goals, and scored 18 goals in the matches of Leverkusen’s U17 team, a performance that won him a silver U-17 Fritz Walter Medal.
Havertz joined the club’s senior team in 2016 – he came on as a second-half substitute, becoming the team’s youngest player to make his debut in the Bundesliga at the age of 17 years and 126 days (a record that was broken by Florian Wirtz this year). Next April, he scored his first Bundesliga goal, breaking another club record – that of the youngest player to score in the Bundesliga. Overall, Havertz played in 118 league games with Bayern Leverkusen, scoring 36 goals.
Now he is en route to becoming Frank Lampard’s seventh signing in this summer season after Werner, Ziyech, Chilwell, Thiago Silva, Malang Sarr, and Mbuyamba.
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