Sport Republic made huge Southampton transfer blunder - but they worked magic too | OneFootball

Spending £22 million on winger Kamaldeen Sulemana didn't work out for Southampton, but the club were able to recoup most of their losses on him.

All transfers carry an element of gambling about them. Some can feel like surer things than others, but ultimately there is always a possibility that things might not work out, and that a player could come to feel like a huge waste of money.

When Sport Republic bought Southampton at the start of 2022, they were buying an established Premier League club. By that point, the Saints were in their tenth consecutive season as a top flight side, and while the days of finishing in the top half of the table seemed to be behind them, there was a body of evidence which demonstrated that this was a club that could support cup finals and European football.

Southampton finished the 2021-22 season in 15th place in the Premier League, but by the end of the January 2023 transfer window they were struggling, bottom of the table and with just one win from their previous eight matches, a run stretching back to the end of the previous October.

Kamaldeen Sulemana had shown great promise in both Denmark and France

At the very end of January, the club made a transfer move for a promising young winger from Ghana. Kamaldeen Sulemana had started his career in Denmark with Nordsjælland, making his debut for them in 2020.

His form attracted attention from elsewhere, and in the summer of 2021 he made the move from Denmark to France, signing for Stade Rennais for a €20 million (£17.5 million) fee. Over the next season and a half, he'd make 47 appearances for the club in all competitions, and the quality of his performances were starting to be noted elsewhere.

Southampton, in serious danger of getting relegated from the Premier League after a decade, needed attacking options, and Sulemana seemed to fit the bill. Their bid for the player, a club-record £22 million, was accepted, and the player moved to St Mary's to join their bid to preserve their top-flight status.

Sulemana & Southampton didn't work out, but the Saints got most of their money back when they sold him on

Kamaldeen Sulemana made his Southampton debut just three days after joining the club, replacing Ibramhima Diallo as a substitute during their 3-0 defeat at Brentford.

But while there were a couple of decent results throughout the remainder of the Saints' 2022-23 season - a 1-0 win at Chelsea and 3-3 draws against both Arsenal and Spurs, for example - they only won two further matches throughout the remainder of the season and were relegated in bottom place.

The Saints were already long gone when Sulemana had the highlight of his spell at St Mary's, when he scored twice - his first goals for the club - in a 4-4 draw with Liverpool on the last weekend of the season. But although his performances were patchy, he stayed with the club throughout the summer and remained in their squad for their bid to return to the Premier League at the first attempt.

Southampton managed this, winning the play-offs after finishing fourth in the Championship, but Sulemana became an increasingly peripheral figure throughout the season. Hampered by injuries which kept him out for the start of the season and then a lengthy spell from the start of December to the start of February, he was limited to the substitutes bench upon his return.

And Southampton's return to the Premier League in 2024 couldn't have gone much worse. They won just two league games all season and were relegated in bottom place with 12 points, 26 short of safety. Sulemana again missed the start of the season with injury, but his return to the first-team squad in the middle of October didn't make much appreciable difference to their fortunes on the pitch.

In the summer of 2025, with another season in the Championship looming, Southampton decided that they needed to move him on, and while the decision to pay £22 million for him in the first place had been a bit of a disaster, they did at least manage to claw back most of what they'd spent on him. Atalanta were persuaded to pay €17m plus up to €4m in bonuses and add-ons - just over £18 million - to take him to Bergamo, meaning that the Saints had got back just over 80% of what they'd paid for him in the first place.

Sulemana has been a moderate success in Italy. Atalanta are still in the chase for a European place, and he's been a reasonably regular performer in their team. Southampton, meanwhile, are still chasing another return to the Premier League, and although Sport Republic aren't particularly popular with Saints fans over the management of the club, at least they can say that the financial hit that they took on this transfer wasn't too great.