Brighton sign South African Player of the Year Percy Tau for £3m
After a pursuit that has gone on for longer than a Leonard Cohen song, Brighton and Hove Albion have finally landed Percy Tau.
The striker arrives for a fee of 50 million Rand from Mamelodi Sundowns. That equates to around £3m with a number of performance-related clauses and a 10% sell on fee included. The fee makes him the most expensive South African football of all time.
It will be a while yet before Albion fans get to the see the South African international in action however. Tau is to be loaned straight out to a club in Europe for the coming season. The club are claiming this is to help him get experience, but it is doubtful that Tau would qualify for a work permit currently.
South Africa are ranked only 74th in the world and Tau has only 12 caps to his name. A full season playing in a European country’s top flight coupled with another year of international football with Bafana Bafana should see him granted clearance to play in Britain next summer.
Tau began his career with the Sundowns but played only six times in the Premier Soccer League. He dropped down a division to join Witbank Spurs for the 2015-16 season, helping them to fourth place in National First Division and in the process earning a move back to the Sundowns for the following campaign.
His second spell with ‘the Brazilians’ was far more fruitful. Not long after rejoining, he helped them lift the CAF Champions League trophy by defeating Egyptian club Zamalek over two legs.
That’s the tip of the iceberg in terms of trophies that Pau has lifted at the wonderfully named Lucas Masterpieces Moripe Stadium. He has three South African titles to his name, one CAF Super Cup and one Telkom Knockout. The 24-year-old was also voted South African Player of the Year and Players Player of the Year last season, heading the Premier Soccer League’s scoring charts in 2017-18. With the Sundowns based in Pretoria, that makes him the most deadly marksman to come from the region since Oscar Pistorious.
Albion were interested in a deal as long ago as March to sign Tau, but negotiations have dragged on even since the intervention of Sundown’s owner Patrice Motsepe who instructed his club to sell in June. Tau has since refused to join the Sundowns in their pre-season preparations.
It is thought unlikely that Tau will head to Tony Bloom’s Belgian club Union Saint Gilloise as they play at a level too low to help with a work permit application.
Tau becomes the second forward to join the Albion this summer after Florin Andone’s arrival from Deportivo La Coruna. He is also the third African to sign, following Nigerian Leon Balogun and Mali’s Yves Bissouma.
