Bassey joins Ajax as Martínez replacement – Rangers receive record transfer fee for defender

Secone highest Premiership sale 

Ajax have confirmed the signing of Rangers defender Calvin Bassey after the defender agreed a five-year deal with the Eredivisie giants. On Wednesday afternoon, the Amsterdam club announced that they have reached an agreement with their Scottish Premiership counterparts for a deal that is worth a reported up front transfer fee of €23 million, plus a further €3.5 million in potential add ons for the defender, who currently has a market value of €10m. 

As such, the transfer breaks Rangers’ current record for a fee received for one of their players, which was set last summer when Everton paid €14m for Nathan Patterson. This new deal will most likely end up being worth twice that, which goes some way to showing just how impressive Bassey has been at the Ibrox club since joining from Leicester City on a free transfer in 2020. The deal will also go down as the second highest fee ever paid by Ajax for a signing, coming some way short of Steven Bergwijn’s €31.25m move from Tottenham Hotspur earlier this month. Bassey’s move from Glasgow to Amsterdam also comes in second place when it comes to the largest ever transfer fees paid out for a Scottish Premiership player. Although it falls short of the €27m Arsenal paid Celtic for Kieran Tierney in 2019, it now leapfrogs Moussa Dembélé’s €22m move to Lyon in 2018 and breaks up Celtic’s dominance in the top five biggest sales in Scottish football history. 

There’s little doubt that Bassey makes the move to the Amsterdam Arena as a clear-cut replacement for central defender Lisandro Martínez, who departed the club earlier in the month for a €57.4m move to Manchester United. And the former Rangers still will be joining a team that’s undoubtedly in the midst of some major changes in players, with the club overseeing no less than eight first team players leaving the club, as well as the former manager Erik Ten Hag. While no less than €64m already spent on new players tasked with stepping into the numerous holes in Alfred Schreuder’s team. 

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