By Sulayman Bah
Croatian Premier League giants Hajduk Split are pondering signing Hamza Barry on a permanent
deal, Foroyaa Sport can report.
The Gambian star joined the club September last year on loan from Cyprus’s Appollon Limassol.
The midfielder’s nine-month deal elapses June 30th.
Barry has featured in sixteen of the club’s games, thirteen of those from the start and has been particularly impressive on each occasion.
Just 22, Hamza has shown exuberance hard to find amongst players of his age and is, more importantly, seen as one not only for keep, but for the future.
Hajduk’s board would jump for joy should they manage to get the Gambian signed to renewed contract terms but that too hinges on the player’s willingness to spend rest of the season in Croatia with the starlet understood to be opened to trying a new adventure should a big club come calling.
Last Sunday’s league game episode may be one of a raft of reasons he would contemplate an exit. Expletives were hurled on the former Ports Authority playmaker including a banana being thrown towards his direction after he scored the opening goal, in a game that ended a draw against table-topping Rijeka.
The last Gambian footballers to be subjected to racial slurs are Pa Dembo Touray in 2006 and Yankuba Ceesay while he plied his trade in Estonia’s top flight.
Meanwhile, any prospect of a deal being brokered will depend on the asking prize with Limassol not worried to send a get-off-our-player’s back message to Hajduk.
Barry hasn’t donned Limassol’s colours but the Cyprus outfit are making close watch on the 22-year-old’s rapid progress and rate the Gambian in excess of €800,000.
Hajduk may baulk at the price tag as ridiculous, however, giving the Croatians are desperate to avoid disrupting their team’s campaign by letting Hamza go, the board in Split may after all have to agree.
That, should it happen, will undoubtedly represent a huge financial boost considering parent club Limassol acquired the midfielder’s services for next to nothing.
