The Deniz Undav to Stuttgart transfer saga which has been rumbling on for most of the summer is at an end with the forward leaving Brighton in a permanent deal worth £25 million to the Albion.
In the process, Undav becomes Stuttgart’s most expensive ever player. Last season’s Bundesliga runners up are splashing the cash this summer.
Their transfer record stood at just under £10 million until the £18 million capture of Ermedin Demirovic from Augsburg last month.
Undav represents a second significant outlay as Stuttgart prepare for Champions League football having finished ahead of Bayern Munich and below only unbeaten champions Bayer Leverkusen.
There has been plenty of debate surrounding whether Brighton should sell Undav or not. The striker arrived at the Amex for £7 million from Tony Bloom’s Belgian club Union Saint-Gilloise.
He found it tough going though initially in England. Personal problems and homesickness had an impact, with Undav admitting in a quite brilliant interview he struggled with the poor standard of sausages and kebabs in Sussex.
A man after my own heart with those priorities. But also one who has clearly never been to Ali Baba in Southwick Square.
Undav might not have found a good doner but his Brighton form did turn around towards the end of the 2022-23 campaign.
Having waited 30 Premier League games to score a goal, Undav ended up plundering five in the final eight matches.
Undav was visibly happier and more confident, leading him to clinically finish most of the chances which came his way.
That form continued into the United States Summer Series, where Undav scored in a 4-3 defeat against Chelsea via a delightful chip.
It came as something of a surprise when Undav was loaned to Stuttgart a few weeks later. Brighton investing a year of patient waiting for Undav to come good suddenly seemed pointless by flogging him the moment the goals start flowing.
Even more surprising than the move to Stuttgart was just how well Undav did in Germany. 18 goals and 10 assists in 30 appearances left him fourth in the Bundesliga golden boot standings.
Undav’s form was good enough to see him make the German squad for Euro 2024. A player loaned out by Brighton becoming a full German international must rank as one of the more surreal moments of this incredible journey the Albion have been on since the Amex opened.
Unsurprisingly given his goal-laden spell at the MHPArena, Deniz Undav was very keen on making a permanent move to Stuttgart.
New Brighton head coach Fabian Hurzeler was said to be equally keen to keep his compatriot. But as Roberto De Zerbi could reliably inform his successor, the Albion manager only has a minor say in the club’s transfer business.
Every Brighton player has a price. It was now down to Stuttgart to come up with a figure which Tony Bloom was willing to accept.
After prolonged negotiations, £25 million has done it. The Albion will consider it good business. £18 million profit on a 28-year-old whose value is unlikely to increase significantly. And who played only 923 minutes of competitive football for Brighton.
Stuttgart will be equally pleased to have got their chief target. Champions League group stage football is worth a minimum of £17.4 million. If Undav fires Stuttgart to qualification again in 2024-25, he will have already repaid most of his transfer fee.
Brighton fans meanwhile will be left to wonder what might have been. Could Undav have taken the form he showed at the end of 2022-23 and delivered it across the whole 2023-24 campaign if he remained at the Amex last season?
How many goals might he have scored for the Albion in 2024-25 if Bloom had resisted the money offered by Stuttgart?
Or would homesickness have occurred again in either of those scenarios, leading his value to crash and Brighton stuck with an unhappy player?
We will never know. The only thing we can say with certainty is Undav would have liked Ali Baba.
