Abdallah Sima joins Ligue 1 side Angers on loan
Brighton & Hove Albion striker Abdallah Sima will spend 2022-23 on a season long loan with French Ligue 1 side Angers.
In case you are struggling to keep up with which young forward is which, Sima is the chap with the incredibly long neck who the Albion paid £7 million to Slavia Prague for on transfer deadline day last August.
Excitement at the prospect of Brighton bolstering their firepower was short lived as he was immediately sent to Stoke City. This led to one of the best collective meltdowns we have seen from Albion supporters.
Highlights included one fan saying they would chop their arm off live on Periscope if Brighton bought a new striker and then loaned him straight to Stoke.
The Together BHA podcast tweeted that they would “lose their fucking minds” should the Albion not sign another striker before the 11pm deadline when it became clear Sima was bound for the Potteries. Spoiler alert – the Albion did not sign another striker before the 11pm deadline.
Whilst this outpouring of anger was going on, nobody really stopped to think about poor Sima. He had just swapped Charles Bridge, Prague Castle and beautiful pints of Staropramen for junction 15 of the M6 and bottles of Fosters in a nightclub called Gossip. Poor bloke.
Unfortunately for Sima, his move to the Bet365 Stadium did not really work out. Injuries restricted him to two Championship appearances totalling 73 minutes and two runouts in the Camila Cabello Cup totalling 50 minutes. In January, he underwent surgery to try and fix a groin problem.
Sima did manage to show he possesses an eye for goal when playing for Stoke Under 23s. He hit four goals in five Premier League 2 Division Two matches, the level below where Brighton’s development team play.
Brighton will be hoping that Abdallah Sima can remain fit for the entire Ligue 1 campaign and proof himself with Angers. Living in the west of France certainly looks more appealing than a year in Stoke-on-Trent.
Angers finished in 14th place last season. They scored only 44 times in 38 matches, so one very obvious area for improvement is goals.
If Sima can start finding the back of the net regularly in Ligue 1, then it will either give Brighton confidence that he can make the grade in the Premier League or attract potential suitors into taking him off the Albion’s hands.
At this stage and following that season at Stoke, it seems unlikely that the Seagulls will turn a profit on the £7 million paid to Sparta.
There were always likely to be speedbumps in the road for Sima. His rise to English football had been meteoric and almost too smooth.
Sina was spotted by French fifth tier club Thonon Evian whilst playing for an amateur team in his native Senegal called Medina.
Evian brought Sina to Europe before he moved to the Czech Republic in early 2020, joining third division side MAS Táborsko.
He came to the attentions of Slavia Prague in the summer of 2020 after scoring twice for Táborsko against Slavia’s reserves in a pre-season friendly.
Slavia subsequently made their move with the intention of using Sina in their B Team for 2020-21. The striker though made such an impression upon arrival that he was fast tracked straight into the senior setup.
Sima ended the season with 16 goals from 33 appearances, helping Slavia to their third straight Czech title. Four of those goals came from 11 Europa League appearances as the Sešívaní made it as far as the quarter finals of the competition, prompting Brighton to bring him to Sussex.
We will watch Sima’s progress with interest in Ligue 1 this season – whilst patiently waiting for that Albion fan to follow through on their promise from last year and film themselves chopping their own arm off.
