In what will come as a surprise to precisely no one who has been watching his progress closely over the last few months, a former Rangers ace is in line for a pretty substantial transfer this summer.
This is, of course, unless his new club run into the same problems that befell the Ibrox outfit back in 2023.
“I watched a lot of videos of him before he came to us. A good player and a great talent,” Malik Tillman‘s former Rangers manager Giovanni Van Bronckhorst told RTL.
“(Tillman) did a great job for us last year. He’s strong on the ball and also with his work ethic. He also reads the game and he has good dribbling ability.
“I do think Rangers wanted to buy him, but Bayern Munich bought off the option to buy that Rangers had. That’s why he is now at PSV.”
£12m transfer awaits former Rangers favourite
Tilman, on the verge of the Eredivisie title after last week’s 8-0 obliteration of Heerenveen, has a £12 million option-to-buy clause in his PSV Eindhoven contract. The runaway Dutch leaders are making no secret of their desire to trigger said clause, but only time will tell whether Bayern do to PSV what they did to Rangers to cancel that arrangement for a minor compensation fee.
At least, as part of their arrangement with the German giants, Rangers would be due 10 per cent of any future transfer fee should Bayern decide to either integrate Tillman into their first-team squad or sell him on to another, more deep-pocketed club for in a sum in excess of £12 million.
“(Signing Tillman permanently) is the intention, yes,” PSV’s CEO Marcel Brands told ESPN after the USA international continued his sublime recent form with two goals and an assist in that eight-star showing in Friesland.
PSV Eindhoven one win away from Eredivisie title
Tilman, named the Eredivisie’s Player of the Week by Voetbal International, now has nine goals and 15 assists in all competitions, maintaining the progress he made during that single-season spell in Glasgow.
“He does things that not every player can do, and always has an eye for his fellow players. He turns well, frees himself up, then passes the ball quickly,” says Ibrahim Afellay, the one-time PSV, Stoke City and Barcelona winger.
“Then, he keeps control and accelerates again. What he shows is really impressive.
“Sometimes he still seems a bit laconic. It seems like he doesn’t care about anything. But he has so much quality, he really is a boy with a lot of potential. I sincerely hope that PSV will soon exercise the purchase option for Tillman.”
PSV can secure their first league title since 2018 with a win at home to Sparta Rotterdam this weekend.
