Allardyce: Klaassen should prioritise football over money

Sam Allardyce has said Davy Klaassen should have prioritised football over money when given the chance to kickstart his career at Napoli this week.

The Everton manager claims a deadline day loan move to the Italian title chasers collapsed due to a dispute over Klaassen’s image rights. The £23.6m summer signing has been frozen out under Allardyce, and caretaker manager David Unsworth before him, having made three Premier League starts since his arrival from Ajax. And Allardyce believes the Netherlands international missed an inviting opportunity to play: “It didn’t seem the normal sort of problem to stop a transfer going through.”
Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend
Read more

He added: “That’s the power of the player with the agent. There is nothing else we can do about that. If I’m sat in that position and have an agent, the agent works for me, not the other way round. For me it would never have been a financial decision. Even if I was losing money I’d be going because I’d want to play football. Davy wants to play football, but whether he got the full story I don’t know. I can’t really speculate much more, other than Davy is disappointed and we are disappointed.”

Allardyce suggested that Napoli’s insistence on owning the midfielder’s image rights, even on a temporary basis, was the root of the problem. “Apparently that’s the norm at that club,” he said. “Whether the image rights are not validated or are taken over by club, I don’t know. It was all down to agent and Napoli really, that was the bottom line.”

Despite being out-of-favour and failing to leave on deadline day, Allardyce insisted Klaassen will not be ostracised from the first team squad. The Everton manager said: “No, because Davy Klaassen doesn’t give you the sort of problems some players do when they’re not involved. He’s a super professional and a super lad, and he comes in and tries his best in training every day. I just think the opportunity for him to go out on loan was missed by everybody that wanted a player of his calibre.”

 Guardian