Napoli officially sign Adam Ounas from Bordeaux

Napoli have officially made their first signing of the summer, with owner Aurelio De Laurentiis welcoming Adam Ounas to the club on Twitter on Monday, followed shortly by a formal announcement of the transfer from the club.

Ounas is a 20 year old French-born winger committed to playing with the Algerian senior national team, despite representing France at the under-20 level. His entire professional career to date has been spent at Bordeuax, scoring eight league goals in his first two first-team seasons. Typically a left winger, he also has the skills to play as a wide forward on the right, making him a good reserve option for Jose Callejon for the upcoming season.

But Ounas wasn’t signed for this upcoming season — he was signed because of his fascinating future potential.

He’s very quick and likes to have the ball at his feet, and while he’s still prone to the odd youthful mistake, Ounas is also very willing to fight his way through challenges to get closer to goal. He very much has the same kind of spirit as Napoli’s other attackers, and hopefully he can learn some valuable lessons from his new teammates, because players like Callejon, Lorenzo Insigne, and Dries Mertens can teach him a lot about his style of game.

The fee is believed to be in the neighborhood of €10 million, a number that in previous years would have seemed very high for a player of Ounas’ age and relative inexperience. This summer, however, that might wind up looking like a bargain, because the transfer market has been spiraling wildly out of control over the past few weeks.

Regardless of that, though, we won’t know what kind of value Ounas winds up being for some time. He’s being signed for the future — though he can still do Napoli a lot of good in this upcoming season, so it’s excellent to see him signing and getting into training this early in the club’s season preparations.

Welcome to Napoli, Adam Ounas! Hopefully your stay is just as productive and bright as it looks like it can be.