Celtic’s pursuit of Mathias Kvistgaarden ended when Norwich City sealed a £6.9m deal for the Danish striker.
Kvistgaarden is a striker who had been on Celtic’s radar for at least two years as the Parkhead club kept close tabs on the now Norwich City man.
67 Hail Hail told at the time how a Danish football expert believed ‘Celtic would be a great move‘ for Kvistgaarden as the speculation at the time intensified.
However, after what seemed like a lifetime of courting and negotiating, Norwich City nicked in and stole the Celtic-linked striker for £6.9m.
And here, Sky Sports’ Anthony Joseph explains how.
Mathias Kvistgaarden arrives for Denmark U21's European Championship game against the Netherlands U21s
Photo by Boris Streubel – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images
How Norwich City signed Celtic target Mathias Kvistgaarden for £6.9m
Celtic dropped their interest in Kvistgaarden when Brondby valued their star striker at £10m. The Parkhead club were negotiating for the striker but were not aware of the mystery clause that Norwich exploited to get him for over £3m less than his valuation.
Joseph explained how on Off The Underside, “My Norwich contact said, ‘No we’ve paid £6.9 million and I was like what?’, I said, ‘But when Celtic were in negotiations it was around about the £10m mark and Lens had a bid accepted for £11.2m.
“I said, ‘You sure?’ They said, ‘Yeah, we’ve done really good due diligence on this. It’s £6.9 million initial fee, but the clause included other things, add-ons that rise to it [£11m].
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“So it could go up to about £11m, but Norwich were confident that they would not be paying anything near that because of the type of criteria that we would need before those installments came in, without going into too much detail on that.
“But once the deal was done, I got a bit more information about the clause and how it came into action and how they’d done their due diligence and how they became aware of it.”
It was ‘not just Celtic’ who were caught out with Mathias Kvistgaarden clause
There was a bit of online reaction to how Celtic could not know about this type of clause but it appears that it was not just the Glasgow giants who were left red-faced over the debacle.
Joseph continued, “So it was quite the thing. I can’t go into too much detail about the exact clause and how it came into effect and how Norwich knew about it.
“But it became quite the coup for Norwich because this is a player Celtic were wanting for about two and a half years and had been tracking.
“So it was quite embarrassing for the other clubs as well. It was not just Celtic who were looking at him. Eintracht Frankfurt were negotiating with Brondby.
“West Ham had even come into the picture and as far as I’m aware, they also weren’t aware of this clause.”
At least there is now closure on this particular transfer chapter for the Celtic supporters. This long-running Kvistgaarden story was becoming a bit of a saga.
With the Hoops’ pursuit of Shin Yamada stepping up, fans will not need to wait too long to see another new face at Parkhead this summer.