Three in one day. Leipzig has delivered a statement of intent for the new Bundesliga season by signing Belgium winger Johan Bakayoko, Serbia midfielder Andrija Maksimovic, and Ivory Coast youth international Yan Diomande all on the same day.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old Bakayoko’s arrival from PSV Eindhoven was the last of the three announced by Leipzig on Wednesday, following that of the 18-year-old Maksimovic from Red Star Belgrade and Diomande, also 18, from Spanish second-division team Legan\u00e9s.<\/p>\n
All three players signed deals through June 2030, the Bundesliga club said.<\/p>\n
Bakayoko, who had also been a target for Bayer Leverkusen, will wear the number 9 at Leipzig.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have had Johan Bakayoko on our radar for a couple of years now and have tried to sign him time and again,\u201d Leipzig sporting director Marcel Schafer said. \u201cWe\u2019re even happier that he\u2019s chosen to join Leipzig despite many teams vying for his signature.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bakayoko helped PSV to back-to-back Dutch league titles with nine goals in 30 league appearances last season, and 12 in 33 the season before.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith his power, explosiveness, pace and eye for goal, he\u2019ll improve our play down the right wing and has his strengths both on and off the ball,\u201d Schafer said.<\/p>\n
Maksimovic made his professional debut aged 16 in Serbia, then Champions League debut and Serbia debut a year later. He has already played eight games for the national team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three in one day. Leipzig has delivered a statement of intent for the new Bundesliga season by signing Belgium winger Johan Bakayoko, Serbia midfielder Andrija Maksimovic, and Ivory Coast youth international Yan Diomande all on the same day. The 22-year-old Bakayoko’s arrival from PSV Eindhoven was the last of the three announced by Leipzig on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51553,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51551\/revisions\/51553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}