Brighton sell Leo Ostigard to Napoli for a fee which could reach £10m

After transfer negotiations which seem to have been dragging on for months, Napoli have finally coughed up for Brighton defender Leo Ostigard.

According to The Athletic, the Albion could receive up to £10 million for the Norweigian centre back. That would make him the fifth highest sale in Brighton history behind Ben White, Yves Bissouma, Anthony Knockaert and Dan Burn. Not bad for a bloke who did not play a single competitive game for the club.

Ostigard joined the Albion from Molde in the summer of 2018 for an undisclosed fee believed to be in the region of £100,000.

His progression at the Amex via a series of loan spells into a profit of £9.9 million is proof that Brighton’s policy of signing young players and developing them into coveted talents is one that works.

Ostigard spent his first season with the Albion in the Under 23s. In 2019-20, he joined Bundesliga 2 club St Pauli for a year.

A breakthrough 2020-21 campaign saw him enjoy an outstanding season at Coventry City, after which most Brighton fans expected him to challenge for a first team place at the Amex.

The sale of White to Arsenal for £50 million along with Shane Duffy’s struggles at Celtic appeared to open a door for Ostigard.

He impressed in pre-season, particularly when looking like a natural-born leader when helping the Albion to a clean sheet in a 0-0 draw against Rangers.

Graham Potter though had other ideas. Ostigard was instead sent on another Championship loan, this time to Stoke City.

He returned to Brighton in January when the Albion were even more in need of centre backs. Burn had departed to Newcastle United and both Lewis Dunk and Adam Webster were struggling with injuries.

Rather than give Ostigard an opportunity, Potter decided he would rather change the back three which had brought Brighton so much success or retrain Marc Cucurella as a centre back.

Ostigard was subsequently sent on another temporary switch, this time to Serie A and Geona. He could not help his new club avoid relegation, but still managed to catch the eye enough for Napoli to want to take him to the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium.

In Naples, Ostigard will play Champions League football for the third best team in Italy last season. It seems rather astonishing that Brighton could find no place for him in their squad.

Two factors are at play here. A fantastic defender Ostigard might be, but there have been doubts aired about his ability on the ball.

Potter values centre backs who can pass more than those who can defend. It is why Duffy has been restricted to a couple of infrequent first team runs over the past three seasons.

At a club who play a style of football not reliant on their defenders keeping the possession count ticking over and striding into midfield as Webster, Cucurella, Dunk and Joel Veltman all do, Ostigard will look like a beast. Brighton in 2022 are not that club.

Ostigard is also fiercely strong willed and determined. The story of him knocking on the door of Molde manager Ole Gunnar Solksjaer as a 16-year-old and saying he should be playing with the first team seems to have been given an airing at least once a month over the past year.

When Ostigard returned from Coventry, he said he would seek another loan move if Brighton could not guarantee him first team football.

He wants to play every week to continue developing and maintain his place in the Norway national team. You cannot fault his ambition, that is for sure.

If Potter does not rate a player highly enough to give them first team opportunities and that player is adamant they want to play every week, then a parting of the ways is a natural outcome.

Disappointing though it is to lose a player with the potential to have a huge career ahead of him, Brighton have at least extracted a big fee from Napoli for Leo Ostigard. It becomes even more impressive when you remember Ostigard was out of contract next summer.

It will be fascinating to see how Leo Ostigard gets on at Napoli and where he ends up next. He is aged 22 at the moment. It would not be a surprise if he returns to the Premier League in three or four years time as he motors towards his peak. Chelsea seem to have a thing for signing players from Napoli…

The Albion are sure to have insisted on a sell-on clause. Maybe they even inserted a buyback option, in case Ostigard improves his ability on the ball or Potter’s successor as Brighton boss wants a different profile of centre back which Ostigard then fits.

Wherever Ostigard goes from here, nobody can complain about making £10 million on a player whose total first team contribution was to sit on the bench when Brighton beat Derby County 2-1 in the FA Cup fifth round in 2018-19. He wore the number 57 shirt, just for future WAB Friday Quiz reference.

Ostigard is a feather in the cap for the scouting, recruitment and coaching departments at the Albion. And something worth remembering next time everyone groans when the club make a teenage signing from the Nordics rather than spending £90 million on a new striker.