“Huijsen seems to be the name on everybody’s lips if you’re a top football club in Europe at the minute.”
The words of former Cherries defender Joe Partington on Dean Huijsen – the 20-year-old central defender who was signed for just an initial £12.8m from Juventus last summer and has been one of the Premier League’s breakout stars this season.
As our Bournemouth expert Mark Mitchener put it on this page earlier, Huijsen is “linked with a different European giant every day”.
“That’s a huge compliment and huge confirmation that Bournemouth’s recruitment team are doing an amazing job,” Partington told BBC Radio Solent’s Cherries: Unpicked podcast.
“If his release clause doesn’t come into play until the summer at least you know you’ve got four, five months left of him. If Bournemouth are in a position at the end of the season where they will play in Europe next year, then you would like to think he would want to stay unless a team came in and offered him a deal too good to turn down.
“He made the decision to come to Bournemouth as a 19-year-old and not wait for a bigger club even though people were saying very nice things about him so he wants to play. He’s doing a very good job of it.
“I’d like to think the club can keep him but with some of the very best young players in the world it’s very difficult to tell what will happen.”
