Rangers will bank a guaranteed £19.6m from the sale of Calvin Bassey to Ajax, the Dutch club have officially confirmed.
The deal could also eventually reach just over £22.5m if achievable add-ons are met as the 22-year-old Nigerian international becomes the Ibrox transfer benchmark [Ajax FC].
Signed for a measly £230k cross-border compensation fee two seasons ago, the versatile defender’s progress over the last two seasons has been a joy to watch and now the club could bank around 100 times what they paid for the defender.
A hugely popular player at Ibrox, Calvin Bassey took his first steps into the men’s professional game at Rangers and will forever have a place at the club.
Despite only spending two years with the Gers, the defender’s eagerness to learn and develop, his commitment to the cause and his sparkling personality have forever endeared him to the supporters at Rangers.
Similarly, the club has found its way into the youngster’s heart as he took to social media to express his fondness for the Famous Glasgow Rangers and send a thank you to everyone at the club.
Whilst this is very much a Rangers story, and an Ajax one too, at the centre of it sits a glowing personality and gracious, positive, inspirational young man who deserves everything that is coming to him and more.
If Calvin Bassey can continue on this trajectory the sky is genuinely the limit and it’s for that reason that Ajax – a late-stage European club whose model Rangers are somewhat aspiring to replicate – have splashed so much money on the player.
Young, English-trained, left-sided defenders are in short supply, especially ones with the recovery pace of Calvin Bassey and the strong ability on the ball.
If things go well in the Netherlands, and we’ve no reason to believe they won’t, then the world is the young Italian-born Nigerian international’s oyster.
We fully expect to see Calvin Bassey back on British shores in the years to come with Ajax surely set to bank even bigger bucks on a move in the future if the defender can take this next step.
But for Rangers, there is no grievance and no bad feeling when it comes to Calvin’s exit, only a positive message of support and an understanding that this transfer must serve as the benchmark going forward.
For the Gers, the sale of Bassey and teammate Joe Aribo this summer proves that buying low and taking advantage of cross-border rules down south is a potential goldmine.
For young players down south, these success of Bassey and Aribo are evidence that not only is Rangers a potential stepping-stone to the biggest leagues and sides in Europe, but that the experience at Ibrox is a special, life-long one that goes beyond the millions that prop these deals up.
Meanwhile, imminent Rangers exit claims appear to have been quashed by one player’s appearance in a pre-season friendly.