Chelsea striker Tammy Abraham left his boyhood club and completed his transfer to AS Roma. Manager Jose Mourinho has hailed Abraham’s ambition after the forward joined Roma from Chelsea on Tuesday. The Roma coach believes the Englishman’s decision to leave the Premier League and join Roma demonstrates ambition.
Abraham agreed on a five-year contract with the Serie A club to fill the void left by Edin Dzeko’s departure to Inter. In the football transfer of the former Chelsea player, Roma paid €40 million (£34.1 million) for his services. He made his senior debut at the Blues in 2016 and has represented his country six times. Mourinho believes Abraham’s decision to leave the Premier League for a new challenge demonstrates his lofty ambitions.
“With Tammy, I prefer to say, ‘wait and see’,” Mourinho said in a video posted on Roma’s Twitter account. “I say that with total confidence. I’ve known him since he was a boy. He’s never played for me because he was a 14, 15, 16-year-old boy when I was at Chelsea, but I know him very well.”
“I know him as a player, a person, and in terms of his mentality. I know how he made the decision to leave the Premier League, which is always tough for an English player. That tells me so much about him because when you leave the Premier League, you do so because you’re ambitious,” the new Roma coach added.
“You leave because you want to get back in your national team because you want to play at the World Cup, because you want success outside of England, where not many English players have had brilliant careers. He comes here with that ambition and we hope to see his best qualities as a player.”
