Adeyemi Has Scored Twice as Bamba Barely Plays

Karim Adeyemi scored Barcelona’s second goal in a 5-1 Champions League win over Feyenoord on 9 September, 48 days after a €22 million move from Borussia Dortmund. He had already scored on his La Liga debut. The German winger now has two goals and an assist in five games.

Aladji Bamba, announced by Newcastle United a day after Adeyemi, has 14 minutes of Premier League football. The coach who signed him has left. The captain he was meant to sit behind has joined Arsenal.

Adeyemi Has Already Scored in Two Competitions

Barcelona signed a contract until 2031 with Adeyemi on 23 July and gave him the No. 14 shirt. The fee was €22 million (£19 million) plus up to €7 million in add-ons, and Dortmund kept a sell-on clause Dortmund built into the deal. He is 24.

His first competitive start came at Elche on 23 August. Barcelona won 5-0. Adeyemi played 64 minutes, scored in first-half stoppage time to make it 2-0, and went off on 65 minutes. He has not started a league match since. He still keeps showing up on the scoresheet.

An 11-minute run against Athletic Club on 27 August produced a shot on target. A 14-minute run against Rayo Vallecano on 31 August produced an assist. He played 29 minutes in the 5-0 win at Valencia on 6 September. Across four Liga matches he has 118 minutes, one start, one goal, one assist, and three shots, all on target. Barcelona are 4-0-0, with 12 points, 17 goals scored and two conceded.

ADEYEMI’S FIRST FIVE BARCELONA MATCHES

The Feyenoord night was louder. Raphinha scored after three minutes. Adeyemi made it 2-0 in the 22nd minute with a right-foot strike from outside the box, then left on 63 minutes. UEFA logged one goal in 63 Champions League minutes, two attempts, 91 percent passing, and a top speed of 34.37 km/h. Raphinha added a second on 57 minutes, Lamine Yamal scored on 77, and Gabriel Jesus, on as a substitute, scored on 85. Sem Steijn’s 82nd-minute reply made it 5-1.

The cheap-fee knock on Adeyemi was that he could not finish. A right-foot strike from range, on his first Champions League night in a Barcelona shirt, is a poor evening for that argument. Asked whether he had scored with his weak foot, he did not play along.

I do NOT have a weak foot.

Karim Adeyemi, after Barcelona 5-1 Feyenoord

He now has two goals and one assist in five Barcelona appearances, 181 minutes in all. He has scored on his debut in both competitions he has played.

Dortmund Had One Year Left on His Deal

Adeyemi asked to go. Borussia Dortmund said so on the day the transfer closed. His contract would have expired next summer, and he had already told the club he would not stay for the extra year. Aston Villa had tracked him. Earlier in the summer he had leaned toward the Premier League. Hansi Flick pulled him the other way.

Flick handed Adeyemi his senior Germany debut in 2021, when the forward was still at Red Bull Salzburg. Barcelona’s own announcement made that reunion the point of the signing. Adeyemi later said Flick was “a big stone in everything” because the coach told him he wanted him and needed him to give everything. “I couldn’t believe it to be honest because I know what I can do and the last season was not the best,” he said at his unveiling.

Last season at Dortmund he scored 10 goals in 39 games in all competitions. Over four years he made 146 appearances, with 36 goals and 25 assists, including 23 goals in 98 Bundesliga matches and 12 in 37 Champions League matches. He started eight of Dortmund’s 12 games on the 2023-24 run to the final, which they lost 2-0 to Real Madrid. He has 48 Champions League appearances in total, 11 of them for Salzburg. Two of last season’s ties were against Barcelona.

When Karim approached us with his desire to transfer to FC Barcelona, we agreed to it after weighing all of Borussia Dortmund’s interests.

Lars Ricken, Managing Director of Sports, Borussia Dortmund

Ricken also noted that Dortmund reached that 2024 final with him. Adeyemi thanked the club, the players, and the fans “who made every game special with their support.” Germany did not take him to the World Cup. He arrived in Catalunya with a full pre-season in front of him and a coach who had already used him at senior level. Barcelona had already signed Anthony Gordon as the first attacker of the window. Adeyemi was the second.

Fourteen Minutes in Tonali’s Old Shirt

Newcastle announced Bamba on 24 July, 24 hours after Barcelona’s Adeyemi statement. The 20-year-old France Under-20 midfielder signed a five-year deal at St. James’ Park and took the No. 8 shirt Sandro Tonali had worn before he left for Tottenham. The fee was £30 million plus £5.5 million in add-ons. He was a European Golden Boy nominee. He had made 25 senior appearances for Monaco, including five in the Champions League, and both legs of a knock-out play-off against Paris Saint-Germain.

Eddie Howe called him “another exciting, young signing” with “huge potential for growth.” Sporting director Ross Wilson said the club had followed him closely and moved quickly once Bamba wanted the move. Bamba said he had already visited the stadium and was “excited to test myself in a new league, the biggest league in the world.” Among Ligue 1 midfielders with at least 500 minutes last season, he ranked in the top five for duels won (9.1 per game), tackles (3.6), successful take-ons (1.6) and aerial duels won (1.9). He had 12 competitive starts for Monaco.

His Premier League life has been a cameo. On 23 August, the same afternoon Adeyemi started and scored at Elche, Bamba came on in the 76th minute of a 2-2 draw with Liverpool. That is 14 minutes. He was in the squad and unused at Tottenham on 29 August, when Newcastle won 2-0, and unused again in a 2-2 home draw with Bournemouth on 5 September. He has one league appearance and no goals.

Matthias Jaissle, the head coach who inherited him, asked for time. “AB is a young lad with huge potential, but also we need to be patient with him,” Jaissle said. “We need to give him the time for the adaptation. Everyone responds a little bit differently to the physicality and intensity of the game.” That is a fair brief for a 20-year-old with one senior season. It is also a different product from the Adeyemi deal that landed in the same roundup.

Eddie Howe Stepped Down on 31 July

Howe was still head coach when Bamba passed his medical. He was gone a week later. On 31 July, Newcastle said Howe had decided to step down after nearly five years, and that Jason Tindall, Graeme Jones, Stephen Purches, Simon Weatherstone and head of performance Dan Hodges were leaving with him. His last match had been a 4-1 pre-season loss at Bristol City.

THE WEEK THE TWO DEALS DIVERGED

1. 23 July 2026: Barcelona announce Adeyemi from Dortmund on a deal until 2031.
2. 24 July 2026: Newcastle announce Bamba from Monaco and give him Tonali’s No. 8 shirt.
3. 31 July 2026: Howe steps down; Adeyemi plays 45 minutes in a 2-2 pre-season draw at Birmingham.
4. 8 August 2026: Bruno Guimarães joins Arsenal for £75 million.
5. 23 August 2026: Adeyemi scores on his Liga debut at Elche; Bamba plays 14 minutes against Liverpool.
6. 9 September 2026: Adeyemi scores on his Champions League debut against Feyenoord.

Howe had taken Newcastle to the Champions League twice and ended a 70-year wait for a domestic trophy with the 2025 Carabao Cup. Last season they finished 12th, with 17 defeats in 38 league matches. “After nearly five years of giving my life, heart and soul into the club with unrelenting energy, I feel that it is in the best interests of both myself and the club to step away, recharge and take a break,” Howe said.

After a period of personal reflection, I have decided that now is the right time for me to step away from my role as head coach of Newcastle United.

Eddie Howe, 31 July 2026, Newcastle United statement

Wilson later said the exit did not feel chaotic because he had been planning for a managerial change for eight or nine months after arriving from Nottingham Forest. “That doesn’t mean we were always going to go to Matthias, but he was always part of our planning,” Wilson said. Jaissle, a two-time Asian Champions League winner with Al Ahli, another club majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, got the job. Bamba’s first league minutes came under a coach who had not signed him.

The Captain Followed Tonali Out Anyway

The July copy on Tyneside still had Howe hoping to keep Bruno Guimarães, with Arsenal yet to make a formal offer and Newcastle calling a player who turns 29 later this year not for sale under about £75 million. On 8 August Arsenal confirmed that Guimarães had joined from Newcastle on a long-term contract. The fee was £75 million, a straight payment with no add-ons, on a four-year deal with a 12-month option. He will wear No. 39.

Guimarães had made nearly 200 appearances for Newcastle after joining from Lyon in January 2022, and he had 48 caps for Brazil. He lifted the Carabao Cup as captain. “This move is very tough because Newcastle means so much to me,” he said. “But I wanted to experience something new in my life. I feel ready for a new challenge for myself and my family.” He also said he wanted to win trophies and “make history.”

Wilson and chief executive David Hopkinson defended the number. Hopkinson said it was not the fee Arsenal had hoped to pay, and that Newcastle would have liked more, and that “you’re dealing with sophisticated actors on both sides.” Lyon are due a slice of the profit, about £6 million to £7 million. Bamba had been framed as a No. 6 who could cover the hole Tonali left. Two weeks after his medical, the other half of that midfield was in north London.

Anthony Gordon had already gone the other way, to Barcelona, before Adeyemi arrived. The July pairing of Adeyemi and Bamba sat on top of that earlier sale. Newcastle were rebuilding a midfield and an attack at the same time, under a new sporting director, then under a new head coach. Bamba is the remaining piece of the July plan who has barely been on the pitch.

Why Newcastle Keep Buying 20-Year-Olds

UEFA fined Newcastle a combined €6 million in June, €3 million for a football-earnings overspend over the three years ending June 2025 and €3 million for a squad-cost ratio breach, and hung a further €7 million over them pending compliance. The club’s squad-cost spending sat near 75 percent against a 70 percent UEFA cap. The settlement runs through 2028/29. If Newcastle return to Europe during that period and miss the earnings targets, they cannot register new signings for those competitions.

That is why the July shopping list looked the way it did. Bamba was the fourth senior signing of the summer, after three other players aged 20 or under. The club’s own announcement listed them in order.

NEWCASTLE’S FIRST FOUR SUMMER SIGNINGS

• Ewen Jaouen: Goalkeeper, 20, signed from Reims before Bamba.
• Bazoumana Touré: Winger, 20, signed from Hoffenheim before Bamba.
• Sean Steur: Midfielder, 18, signed from Ajax before Bamba.
• Aladji Bamba: Midfielder, 20, signed from Monaco on 24 July for £30 million plus £5.5 million in add-ons.

Howe said Bamba “operates in a deeper role but has the ability to contribute all over the pitch, which he demonstrated in both Ligue 1 and the Champions League last season.” Wilson talked about evolution in the Premier League. The policy, as it was described in July, was to buy players aged 24 or under, broadly between £20 million and £40 million, with resale value, so a club on a UEFA settlement stayed inside the rules. Bamba fits the sheet. He does not yet fit the team sheet.

Patience is the official line, and it may be the right one. A 20-year-old with 25 Monaco games was never going to replace Tonali and Guimarães in August. The July roundup still put his medical next to Adeyemi’s unveiling, as if they were similar pieces of summer business. One of those pieces is already scoring in the Champions League. The other is waiting for a second league appearance.

Gordon Replaced Him After the Strike

Flick did not leave Adeyemi on for the full Feyenoord match. On 63 minutes he sent on Gordon, the winger Barcelona had signed from Newcastle earlier in the window. Anthony Gordon’s first months at Barcelona now include coming on for the other summer attacker after that attacker had just scored. Yamal and Raphinha were already on the pitch. Jesus would score later. The front line that looked crowded on 23 July had room for a 24-year-old who runs behind a defence, and Flick used it.

Adeyemi’s pre-season had been quieter. He started the 2-2 draw at Birmingham on 31 July, the same day Howe resigned, and played the first 45 minutes without a goal. The league and European nights have been the point. He was left out of Germany’s World Cup squad, then told Flick he would give everything, then scored on both debuts he has been given.

Bamba’s next minutes will come when Jaissle decides the adaptation has gone far enough. Adeyemi’s next minutes will come in a Barcelona attack that has four Liga wins from four and a 5-1 Champions League opening night. The two deals still share a July date. They no longer share a story.