U18s player Imam Jagne terminates his contract

I can't recall any of his games for Everton.

Also the transfer fee, surely there would have been a big spread about this for a player nobody seems to know of?

If 20 x ٟ.3M promising youngster buys = 㿇M

If 2 go on to 㾻M each = profit
If 1 goes onto Gordon level = massive profit, etc.

As any investor knows, speculate to accumulate. Much better option than paying 㿀-30M for a single average player like we have done for last 6 years.

They realised the mistake and knocked him down to the U18s after a handful of games, despite the usual bluster from Unsworth that he was going to be huge.

This is how we reported his signing 2 years ago:

Everton sign Swedish youngster

Seems like a serious misjudgement in terms of scouting, as it is really odd for such a young player to go straight into the U23s, only for him to be then knocked back, never to reach that level again with us. Very odd.

The kid obviously feels he needs first-team football, and that Everton can't provide it, which for me is code that his standard is well below what was expected of him.

I think Jonjoe Kenny knew that displacing Seamus Coleman was a tall order, and when the club signed Nathan Patterson, well, the writing was writ large upon the wall.

There's a huge difference in that Kenny was offered a new contract but turned it down for happier hunting grounds in the Bundesliga. So no parallels here for me.

Player reveals he left Everton to ‘enjoy football again' – Praises Toffees for being ‘supportive' in negotiations

This links back to an original story in Swedish, but it does appear that he left Everton "in the summer". Dave, it seems not even GOT had word that he'd left before this story broke.

This may give his wages while at Everton:

Imam Jagne - Salary & Contract

I remember seeing bits of his play when we thrust him immediately into the U23s, quickly realised he wasn't up to it, dropped him down and before long he was on the bench for the U18s.

We got this completely wrong and smacks of poor scouting, I'm all for taking a chance on youngsters from other clubs/ countries but Jagne never came close to doing anything with us.

1) Marcel Brands's team bought him in 2020.

2) Brands force-fed him into the U23s as part of his plan to fast-track youngsters through the age groups.

3) Like a lot of other "mis-handled" or "over-hyped" prospects through Unsworth's conveyor belts, Jagne got a culture shock (to say the very least) and wasn't properly looked after by Unsworth (as part of the, what we now know, usual "Up Yours" compromise shown by Unsworth towards Brands).

4) Benitez didn't bother to look at the U23s, let alone the U18s, to where Jagne got relegated. So, another lack of support for him within the club.

5) The dominoes started falling one by one since this time last year: Brands, Benitez, Unsworth.

6) Thelwell came in afterwards and might have tried doing the damage control (just imagine how much was on his plate since he joined Everton in February), but it was too little, too late: Jagne would have got depression if he's staying around Finch Farm any longer!

I was sent to a Boarding School in Canada from Hong Kong a year before my O-Levels, so I fully feel what Jagne went through at a similar age (his experience was a hell of a lot worse than mine) and have all the sympathies for him.

IMHO, Everton Football Club failed him (cue the scene Sir Michael Caine crying in front of the Wayne tombstones in "The Dark Knight Rises").

Fingers crossed that Jagne can finally re-launch his life and career back home with all his family and support system around him.

Spotting potential young talent at an early age is very much a crystal ball operation in my opinion. For every kid who makes the grade, literally hundreds don't and have to be released early with all the heartbreak that entails.

Professional football at top level is a cruel and ruthless game, but the potential rewards for the successful few keep feeding the machine.

I think you nailed it. Add to that the issues he will have experienced with lockdown and pandemic disruption. He was being touted around Europe when we bought him.

It wasn't poor scouting, he had all the right raw materials. Sometimes it's bad luck or circumstance. We won't win with all of these speculative signings (they are still just boys after all), and we don't need to. But every time it does work out is a huge plus for the club.

Sorry I can't say I ever saw anything of him suggesting “he had all the right materials” when he featured for us. Even players who didn't get very far but did well after we'd let them go showed something with us, Shayne Lavery for example.

Good luck to Jagne; for me, he just wasn't good enough.