If you begin typing ‘Stefanos T’ into Google, the number-one search will take you to one of Greece’s finest athletes in the modern day. And that would be tennis sensation Stefanos Tsitsipas. Always open with a joke…
Anyway, lagging behind in second is namesake Stefanos Tzimas, the reason why we’re here today, and it won’t be long until he’s the king of that particular Hellene query. Having recently turned 19 and only moved to the 2. Bundesliga with Nurnberg last summer, he has already secured a mega-money move to one of Europe’s top-five leagues, with Brighton agreeing a £20.8m (€25m/$26.2m) deal on deadline day of the winter transfer window. This made him one of football’s most expensive players without a senior international cap to their name of all time.
The likes of Chelsea, Liverpool and Bayern Munich were also heavily linked with Tzimas, but why exactly were some of the continent’s premier talent spotters so keen to snap him up in spite of this small sample size at senior level? GOAL has the lowdown on the Seagulls’ next scoring sensation…