How Real Madrid won the race to sign Dean Huijsen – beating Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and more

A list of clubs that reads like a who’s who of European football queued up to sign Dean Huijsen this summer, in some cases talking contracts with the player’s agent and his father one minute and playing padel with the two of them the next.

But the story behind the deal for one of European football’s most talented young defenders starts and ends in the same place — the Spanish capital — and goes back a lot further than people might imagine.

Real Madrid’s interest has been there in one way or another for years and not just the last couple of months, when everything started to gather momentum on the back of Huijsen winning his first Spain cap in March and, critically, Xabi Alonso making it clear that he wanted the Bournemouth centre-back at the Bernabeu. Real Madrid’s manager in waiting was repeating a familiar message.

“FICHAR” was stamped across the reports compiled on Huijsen as long ago as 2020, when he was playing for Malaga’s Cadete B team — under-15 football in Spain — and caught the eye of Madrid’s academy staff and scouting team. There was no need for a trial at the club or to see Huijsen in training. “Sign him” was the recommendation of Alfredo Merino, who was Real Madrid’s academy recruitment director at the time.

Madrid tried. They had Huijsen in the building at the age of 16, when he looked around the club’s Valdebebas training complex with his family during the pandemic. Not many players leave Real Madrid without putting pen to paper. But Huijsen did.

Juventus won the chase for his signature in May 2021 after Huijsen was swayed by both the project on offer in Turin, where the ​Serie A c​lub had a renewed focus on youth that included plans for him to be part of their Next Gen Under-23 team in Italy’s third tier, and also the fact that Matteo Tognozzi, the former head of scouting, had gone to such lengths (travelling to Marbella to follow up some grainy video footage that they had received from an intermediary) to demonstrate how serious they were about signing him.

In truth, it wasn’t much of a chase four years ago – certainly not compared to now. Huijsen’s father, Donny, and his agent, Ali Barat, have spent the last few months on a carousel, holding discussions with, in no particular order, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United.

Aged 20 and with a £50million ($67m) release clause in his contract, Huijsen had become one of the hottest properties in world football.​ All of which was great news for the player, his agent and Bournemouth​, but awkward and bordering on embarrassing for Juventus, who made the ​curious decision to sell Huijsen for £12.8m last summer, after giving him only one opportunity to play for the first team, and bring in Lloyd Kelly from Newcastle as his replacement.

It’s hard to reconcile the effort Juventus put in to sign Huijsen from Malaga (right down to small but important touches, such as ensuring that club legend Giorgio Chiellini was the first person he spoke to at the club), and the time they put into his development over the seasons that followed, with how they sold and, essentially, sacrificed such a gifted young player last summer to make a relatively small contribution to a wider spending spree.

The fact that those at the centre of the youth project that Huijsen had been sold at Juventus — Tognozzi, Federico Cherubini and Giovanni Manna — were no longer at the club ​last summer provides an explanation of sorts. But only of sorts.

Looking back, the clues were there for Juventus during Huijsen’s loan spell at Roma in the second half of last season. Speaking at a pre-match press conference in January 2024, just before he left his post as manager at Roma and shortly after Huijsen had arrived on loan, Jose Mourinho described the youngster as “one of the highest-quality prospects in European football at his age”.

Daniele De Rossi, Mourinho’s successor at Roma, gave an endorsement of his own a couple of months later. “In a few years, we’ll be asking him (Huijsen) for tickets to go to see the Champions League final,” De Rossi said.

Huijsen playing for Roma on loan in 2024 (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images)

Remarkably, though, there was little in the way of a market for Huijsen this time last year, certainly not among the top clubs in the world (Lille, Torino and Marseille were ​showing the most interest), and that forced Juventus to slash their asking price.

It says everything about Huijsen’s rise that one of ​Real Madrid’s coaching staff hadn’t even heard of him when he was available to buy for about €17m (£14.3m; £19.2m) last summer.

Other staff at Madrid were better informed. Comments such as ‘solid aerial game offensively and defensively’, ‘high intensity when marking’, ‘clean technique’ and ‘excellent passing range’ appeared under Huijsen’s name on the reports that Real Madrid’s scouting department continued to put together long after he joined Juventus.

In a way, he was never off their watchlist.​ At the same time, Real Madrid didn’t think Huijsen was ready or good enough to sign for them last summer — and they were far from alone in that respect.

Aged 19 and with only 533 minutes of Serie A football to his name, Huijsen went largely under the radar. Bournemouth were the only Premier League team seriously interested in him and that was purely down to their appointment of Tiago Pinto as group director of football in May.

Pinto arrived from Roma, where he had ​observed Huijsen’s ability and potential first-hand and, in football terms, fallen in love with the player. He was hell-bent on bringing Huijsen to Bournemouth, even if others at the club were lukewarm about the transfer.

Huijsen during Bournemouth’s pre-season friendly against Rayo Vallecano in August (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)

​Perhaps that type of reaction was understandable. On paper, Huijsen was going to be Bournemouth’s fourth-choice centre back. A project player. One for the future.

Nobody — not even Pinto, whose decision to ​push through that transfer deal with Juventus in July now looks like an absolute masterstroke — could have predicted what would happen.

Huijsen made a sprinkling of appearances early on in the season but he got his big break at Bournemouth after Marcos Senesi picked up an injury at Wolverhampton Wanderers in December. Grasping that opportunity spectacularly, Huijsen not only established himself as a mandatory pick in Andoni Iraola’s team but also played in a way that made the biggest clubs sit up and take notice.

A 6ft 5in (195cm) two-footed ball-playing centre-back who relishes duels and looks totally at home in the Premier League at 19 was always going to bring people to the table, especially once word got around about his release clause.

Premier League clubs were the first to pull up a chair. Arsenal presented a strong financial offer and broad pitch that demonstrated their determination and commitment to signing him.

Mikel Arteta, Arsenal’s manager, and Andrea Berta, the newly appointed sporting director, provided assurances that Huijsen would get plenty of game time — something that other clubs competing for his signature questioned would be possible at the Emirates because of the presence of William Saliba and Gabriel.

Arsenal fans watched Huijsen score against them this month (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Liverpool thought they were in a strong position too. Huijsen’s father, a former professional footballer in the Netherlands, has a good relationship with Liverpool head coach Arne Slot. On top of that, Huijsen is a big admirer of Virgil van Dijk — master, meet pupil.

Newcastle were firmly in the mix too and impressed those close to Huijsen with the diligence and professionalism of their approach, including how they had tracked the player over a longer period, going back to last summer.

Chelsea’s interest was more opportunistic in the sense that a centre-back wasn’t on their list of priorities, especially with 19-year-old Mamadou Sarr joining from Strasbourg this summer.

However, the combination of Huijsen’s elite talent and the buyout clause was too good to ignore. Chelsea liked Huijsen’s adaptability — he can play on the left or the right in central defence, or even in the middle of a back three — and believed they were well-placed to win the race before Real Madrid showed up.

Although there was always a sense that Huijsen’s preference would be Madrid — he told The Athletic in March that he was flattered and “proud” to be linked to the European champions, and said that former club captain Sergio Ramos was his idol — the bigger question was just how badly they wanted to sign him.

Real Madrid’s stance shifted on the back of Huijsen playing for the Spanish national team twice in four days in March. Both games were in the Nations League against the Netherlands, the country Huijsen had captained at under-19 level and where he was born and raised until he moved to Spain at the age of five. Huijsen was outstanding.

“It simply looks like he’s been at the elite level of football for many years,” the Spain coach Luis de la Fuente said.

Huijsen shakes hands with Van Dijk after Spain’s first game against the Netherlands in March (Alex Bierens de Haan/Getty Images)

Those performances encouraged Madrid, but they still harboured doubts about paying the clause – something that effectively ruled Barcelona out – and ​they were ​also concerned that Premier League clubs would be willing to offer Huijsen a huge salary.

You wonder whether Madrid would have pulled out of the deal but for the input of the man who will soon be confirmed as Carlo Ancelotti’s replacement as manager. Alonso, who has taken charge of his last game with Bayer Leverkusen, requested that Madrid sign Huijsen.

At that point, everything accelerated. ​Late to the party, Madrid elbowed their way to the front and, realistically, Huijsen was only going to end up in one place once it became clear that the Bernabeu was a viable option for him. A move to one of Spain’s biggest clubs was already on his mind two years beforehand when he was weighing up the switch of national teams.

Jose Angel Sanchez, the Real Madrid CEO, handled negotiations and was keen to tie everything up quickly to enable Huijsen to play in the revamped Club World Cup in the United States next month.

Except for academy graduate Raul Asencio – who could face criminal proceedings for allegedly sharing a sex tape involving a minor – all of Madrid’s first-team centre-backs (Eder Militao, Antonio Rudiger and David Alaba) are injured, meaning Huijsen​ will almost certainly go straight into the team.

Madrid and Bournemouth agreed to structure fee payments across three instalments over 18 months. Juventus will pick up 10 per cent of the profit — a small consolation — and Bournemouth stand to take 10 per cent from any future sale. As for Huijsen’s first club Malaga, around €500,000 is coming their way.

Huijsen’s own deal is worth about €5m a year net, which is a night-and-day difference to what he was earning 12 months ago, when Juventus were trying to find a buyer for a young player who would now walk into pretty much any squad in the world.

(Additional contributors: David Ornstein, James Horncastle, Mario Cortegana, James McNicholas, Simon Johnson)

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

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