Jan 27, 2025
Within the space of six months, 18-year-old centre-back Juma Bah has gone from playing football in his homeland of Sierra Leone to paying his own €6million release clause in order to unilaterally break his contract with a club in Spain’s La Liga and days later join Premier League champions Manchester City.
And then immediately get sent on loan to Lens, the French club who just sold a 20-year-old centre-back to City for an initial €40million, for the rest of the season.
Nice and simple then.
It has been a fraught seven days for Bah’s previous club Real Valladolid, as we will go into in more detail below.
They only made his signing permanent on January 1 having previously had him on loan, and were counting on him as they battle against relegation from Spain’s top flight. If Bah was to leave this month, Valladolid were determined to get more than €6million for him, but to do that they needed him to sign a new contract first (and increase his release clause). The club claim there was a verbal agreement in place since September, shortly after his loan began.
In a lengthy statement on X on Tuesday morning, Bah’s agent said nothing was ever communicated to him or the player after they agreed to that initial proposal, and at no point had they refused to transfer his licence from the Valladolid youth team to the reserve team or first team.
Bah had not been seen by Valladolid since last Tuesday (January 21), which was when City first expressed their interest and also the day he paid up his own release clause with the Spanish football federation (RFEF). Valladolid subsequently released a punchy statement accusing City of “appearing to advise” Bah to “breach his contract” with them. City remained quiet.
At the weekend, when a Bah-less Valladolid were beaten 3-0 at home by Real Madrid, there were protests directed towards their owner, the former Real Madrid and Brazil striker Ronaldo, about his running of the club.
Then on Monday, at 5pm UK time, City announced on their website that they had signed Bah and he was off on loan to Ligue 1 side Lens.
Here’s a run-through of Bah’s background, his time at Valladolid and the controversy of the past seven days…
What is Bah’s story?
Bah’s rise to La Liga was rapid — until last summer, he was playing at club level in his native Sierra Leone.
Born in Freetown, the capital of the west African country, he told Valladolid’s in-house media he would help his father with his work at a bakery by waking at 4am to collect firewood, and that he started out playing football barefoot. He came through the Freetown Giant Academy, before moving to AIK Freetong in 2021-22 and then spending two seasons on loan at top-flight Freetonians SLIFA.
As Bah said in a YouTube interview with Valladolid, their scouting co-ordinator Pachu Martinez went to see him play a league game in Sierra Leone and “believed” in him. Bah joined the Spanish club on loan in August, moving into their academy facilities and making one appearance for their reserve team in a fourth-tier game the following month.
Six days later, he was unexpectedly called up to the senior side to make his La Liga debut against Real Sociedad, with Valladolid short of options in defence due to injuries. He became the first player from Sierra Leone to appear in the Spanish top flight and went on to play 11 more times in La Liga.
“It’s crazy,” the quiet, introverted teenager told the club’s YouTube channel. “I started playing from the streets.
“It was really stressful not having boots to play (when he was younger), but I’m really happy now I’m here… I didn’t expect that I would be in La Liga, to play yesterday (against Real Sociedad). I don’t know how I should express my feelings, I was so emotional yesterday. It was amazing — the best feeling ever.”
What were the terms of his move to Valladolid?
Bah joined Valladolid in August from AIK Freetong on a 12-month loan, with an option to buy for €150,000. His salary at the time was around €2,000 a month, in line with others in their youth setup. If players progress at the club, their salary and release clauses increase.
By September, Valladolid had already decided to make Bah’s move permanent, and the club say an agreement to do so, which included improved terms for the player, was approved by all parties by the middle of that month. At this point, Bah had been training with and playing for their second team. He faced Real Sociedad in his first-team debut on September 21.
He was offered a new contract by the club but that could not be effective until January because that was the earliest point Valladolid could make his loan permanent.
How has he got on at Valladolid?
With just 864 minutes of La Liga football to his name, and having been thrown straight into the division’s leakiest back line at the age of 18, it’s difficult to come away with too many concrete conclusions on Bah’s ability — the levels of his individual performances have often been dictated by the instability across the Valladolid defence as a whole. Some things, however, are immediately obvious.
At 6ft 4in (195cm), he is dominant in the air. His aerial duel success rate of 70.5 percent is eighth-best among La Liga players with more than 25 duels contested, while only two players across Europe’s top five domestic leagues can better his rate of four headed clearances per game. His biggest test came in November away against Getafe, where he won seven of his 11 aerial contests with some of the division’s most physical battlers, coming away with a burgeoning reputation very much intact.
The battle-hardened Bah also possesses a surprising turn of pace for a defender so commanding. He is comfortable tracking tricky wingers down the channel, making him an intriguing option to play on the outside of a back three as well as in the central duo of a defensive four.
(Eduard Duran/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)
On the ball, there has not been too much opportunity to see Bah’s distribution; Valladolid are not La Liga’s most direct side, but around 18 per cent of their passes from the defensive third this season have been long, showing their desire to avoid a battle for possession if they can help it. Bah has stepped up and fizzed a few nice passes through the lines, but he understandably tends to play things safe with his side in the relegation picture.
Before the developments over the past week, Valladolid fans had been excited by Bah — not just in terms of seeing a highly rated young player in action and what role he might play in helping them try to avoid the drop, but also in terms of how much money he could bring in for them when he did leave for a bigger club.
Valladolid made a massive profit on now Ghana international centre-back Mohammed Salisu when he moved to Southampton of the Premier League for €12.85million in 2020, after a little under three years in Spain. Salisu, like Bah, had initially joined Valladolid’s youth setup.
So, what’s happened this month?
On January 1, Valladolid exercised their option to buy Bah, and the plan was for both his salary and release-clause value to increase. In the youth setup, his release clause was set at €6million, in the second team it would be €12m, and in the first team it would be €30m.
But despite Bah moving permanently to Valladolid this month, there was no agreement on a new contract, which has meant that, as this winter transfer window continued, his release clause remained at €6million.
Practically every player in La Liga has a release clause — a fee which, if offered by another club, allows the player to speak to them with a view to sealing a transfer. This is because Spain’s employment law gives players the right to — in theory — break their contract at any time to join a new team. The player’s previous club would be due a fee, but this would only be determined through a lengthy process in court. Inserting a release clause in a player’s contract prevents that.
Instead of one club handing over the money to the other, however, in Spain paying the release clause involves the player — or a legal representative acting on their behalf — receiving the money from the interested team and delivering it to La Liga’s central offices in Madrid. La Liga then distributes the money. (Or, in Bah’s case, it was the Spanish FA who received and distributed the money).
After the 18-year-old made his debut for their first team in September, Valladolid say his agent began changing their position and insisting that Bah would not sign the new agreement. Bah’s agent denies this, saying they received the proposal and agreed to it, and that there was no further communication from the club.
This month, at the request of the player, Valladolid began negotiating with Turkish side Fenerbahce and clubs in Italy over the transfer of Bah. Fenerbahce were understood to be willing to pay €8.5million, obviously above the €6m release clause in his youth contract, but with the caveat that he would stay at Valladolid for the remainder of 2024-25 to help their fight against relegation.
Bah’s agent said: “I submitted several offers before the opening of the transfer window. Some clubs even offered more than the price fixed by the release clause, but Real Valladolid did not accept any offer.”
Valladolid say they were contacted by Manchester City last Tuesday, with the Premier League side wanting to open negotiations over Bah. On the same day, they were informed by the player’s agent that Bah’s contract was terminated after his release clause had been paid and that he was leaving.
The player went to Valladolid’s training ground, collected his boots and left again. He did not turn up for training the following day (Wednesday) and has never been back.
Also that Wednesday, Valladolid called the RFEF to check the agent’s claims and were told that €6million had been deposited, meeting the clause in Bah’s contract.
Later in the day, Valladolid released a statement accusing City of “appearing to advise” Bah to “breach his contract” with them. The Spanish club said it had been put “in a defenceless position, after having recently rejected financial offers of a higher amount”. There was no comment from City on the statement and comments made by Valladolid, presumably waiting for the issue to blow over.
Then on Monday afternoon, City posted a four-sentence statement on their website announcing the signing of Bah, and his immediate loan to Lens.
They said he had “completed his registration” with the club after “a spell with Real Valladolid”.
Bah’s agent wrote on X on Tuesday: “One of these clubs has shown a special interest in Juma Bah and, after attempting an amicable negotiation, has decided, voluntarily, consciously and analysing the whole situation, to pay the price of the release clause to free the player from his contract with Real Valladolid and proceed to sign him.”
Valladolid declined to comment on City’s announcement.
Why do City want Bah?
Considering he is more of a ‘CFG (City Football Group) signing’, meaning he is a promising player that can be an asset to any club in the CFG stable now or in the future, and in theory holds significant resale value, City will want to minimise their risk (i.e. the outlay) as much as possible, in case Bah does not reach his potential or the move does not work out other reasons.
Bah was enthused by the idea of joining City — the group, which includes 13 teams worldwide from the United States to Japan, Brazil and Australia — and will receive good money for doing so.
Although parent club City are clearly rebuilding their squad, having also signed two other young centre-backs and forward Omar Marmoush this month, Bah will not be an immediate first-team reinforcement at the Etihad Stadium.
Essentially, he is another signing for CFG, and the vast majority of those never actually play for Manchester City. He has been loaned to Lens for the second half of 2024-25, following their sale of 20-year-old fellow centre-back Abdukodir Khusanov to City (who has gone straight into manager Pep Guardiola’s senior squad), and that may be extended to next season too.
What happens next?
Well, Bah has joined a team who are seventh of the 18 teams in France’s top tier (a position that was enough last season for European qualification), while Valladolid are bottom of the Spanish equivalent, six points off safety.
Valladolid are consulting their legal team before deciding what, if anything, they can do about Bah’s contract termination and subsequent move to City.
Bah’s agent wrote on X that he would be considering legal action of his own against Valladolid.
(Additional contributors: Tomas Hill Lopez-Menchero, Sam Lee, Thom Harris)
(Top photo: Octavio Passos/Getty Images)
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6092367/2025/01/28/man-city-transfer-juma-bah-valladolid-release-clause/