With AFP
Gabonese striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has signed for Chelsea for two years from FC Barcelona. This was announced by the two clubs on the night of Thursday to Friday, just hours after the official end of the summer transfer window.
The Spanish club said in its press release that the 33-year-old former Dijon, Saint-Etienne, Dortmund and Arsenal player had been sold for 12 million euros.
The footballer who made his debut at the L’Huisserie club near Laval, did not really transform the test at FC Barcelona and is delighted to bounce back in England: “Iam so happy. It’s an honor to be part of this team and I can’t wait to get started. I have scores to settle with the Premier League and it’s so good to be back, it’s very exciting“, said Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
The striker will indeed find a championship he left just seven months ago, after terminating his contract with Arsenal, following disciplinary and punctuality problems.
In six months spent in Catalonia, Aubameyang (73 caps with Gabon, 30 goals) scored 13 goals in 24 matchesending the season as the club’s top scorer, tied with Memphis Depay.
But the Lavallois no longer entered into the plans of the Spanish club, in the grip of economic difficulties and which wanted to relieve its payroll of the two million euros monthly that “Aubam” received, according to the Spanish press. This transfer, announced several days ago, could have been called into question by the burglary suffered by the Gabonese star at his home near Barcelona at the very beginning of the week.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was no longer destined for a starting position at the forefront of the Barcelona attack since the recruitment this summer of Polish star Robert Lewandowski for around 50 million euros from Bayern Munich.
Chelsea, for their part, have been in the hunt for a centre-forward since the departure of Timo Werner to Leipzig and Belgian Romelu Lukaku’s one-season loan to Inter Milan.
He is the Blues’ seventh signing. and Chelsea are the biggest-spending English team in an already unusual summer transfer window, even for the Premier League. More than 200 million euros have thus been spent by the new American owners of the club, with the purchases of Marc Cucurella, Raheem Sterling, Kalidou Koulibaly or the Frenchman Wesley Fofana, in particular.
The London club have had a mixed start to the Premier League season, with two wins, one draw and two losses after five league games.