Roma confirmed the sale of Justin Kluivert to Bournemouth on Friday evening.
Kluivert joined Roma from Ajax in 2018 and spent two seasons in the first team, scoring nine goals from 68 appearances but struggling to fulfil his potential – still ending up in the top half of Giallorossi Yorkshire’s ranking of every signing Monchi made at Roma, though that said more about the former sporting director’s poor work than the Netherlands international’s ability.
He subsequently went on loan to RB Leipzig in the Bundesliga, Nice in Ligue 1 and Valencia in La Liga as Roma sought desperately to offload him.
Recently, the 24-year-old confessed he had only ever viewed Roma as a stepping stone to someone like Real Madrid or Barcelona, leading to his frustration at being stuck at the club.
Now, they have finally found a permanent solution for the winger, who hasn’t been good enough to get the next step he dreamed of originally, but will get to tick off the last of Europe’s five major leagues by playing in the Premier League.
Bournemouth already took Matias Vina on loan from Roma in January and may yet explore a permanent deal for the left-back. They also tried to sign Nicolo Zaniolo in the winter before he refused to join them and Roma had to sell him to Galatasaray instead.
There have been no such issues with the Kluivert transfer. Roma actually tried sending him to the Premier League last year, but he couldn’t get a work permit to join Fulham. Now, a slight shift in legislation has enabled the Dutchman to move to England.
Roma are receiving a transfer fee of £9.5m (€11m) plus £850k (€1m) in add-ons (€500k every 20 appearances, also relating to if Bournemouth stay in the Premier League) and a 5% sell-on clause, it has been reported, which although is less than what they paid Ajax for him five years ago goes down as a €7m capital gain and will be helpful towards them meeting their Financial Fair Play targets by the end of June.
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