Jose Mourinho has hailed new capture Tammy Abraham from Chelsea.
The 23-year-old completed his move to AS Roma on Monday, signing a five-year deal at the Italian side. The deal cost the club £34m and sees Abraham replace the now-departed Edin Dzeko as the club’s number 9.
And in a chat with Roma’s official website, Mourinho has opened up on his new star striker, labelling his signing as a bargain.
‘Even if he (Abraham) hadn’t joined, I still would’ve had a positive view of the owners and the general manager, given that they did everything possible to react to the departure of a top player like [Edin] Dzeko,’ he said. ‘They’ve been fantastic.
‘As for Tammy, I prefer to say wait and see. 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 and 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.
‘You leave because you want to get back into your national team because you want to play at the World Cup, because you want success outside of England, where not that many English players have had brilliant careers.
‘He comes here with that ambition, and we hope to see his best qualities as a player. With Tammy, Eldor [Shomurodov] and Borja [Mayoral], we have attacking options that I’m very pleased about.
‘We don’t have the experience of players who are 30, 33 or 35.
‘We don’t have the experience that you might see at Juve with Cristiano, at Milan with [Olivier] Giroud and Zlatan, [at Atalanta] with [Luis] Muriel and [Duvan] Zapata, given they are all established and have a wealth of experience.
‘We don’t have that, but in terms of potential, I couldn’t be happier with the players that we have.’
The 23-year-old opened up on why he chose AS Roma, stating that the Serie A club’s clear interest in him was a major factor.
‘You can sense when a club really wants you—and Roma made their interest clear immediately,’ he said.
‘Roma is a club that deserves to be fighting for titles and trophies. I’ve had the experience of winning major trophies, and I want to be in those competitions again.
‘I want to help this team to achieve that and get to the level where Roma should be.
‘It’s a massive honour to be the No 9 at this club, and I just can’t wait to get started and to help the team.
