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FINALLY WORKING: Haitam Aleesami is ready for the new club. Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen
After relegation to Italy and France, national team left-back Haitam Aleesami (29) wanted his next club to be one that would fight at the top of the table. It will be Russian Rostov.
The club confirms the signing on its website, and Aleesami thus joins Norwegian teammate Mathias Normann (24), who has played there since January 2019 with great success. Aleesami has signed a contract that is valid until the end of the season, but with an option for extension.
Rostov is number seven in the table after ten rounds and has been active in the Scandinavian market towards the transfer deadline: Pontus Almqvist from Norrköping and Armin Gigovic from Helsinborg have also been hired by coach Valerij Karpin.
Aleesami played last season for French Amiens. The club was condemned to relegation as it was last at the time Ligue 1 was canceled as a result of the corona pandemic. He used a “relegation clause” to terminate the contract and has been unemployed since the summer.
However, he kept his place in Lars Lagerbäck’s national team during the first three games of the autumn, including the defeat in the Eurocup playoffs against Serbia (1-2). Aleesami did not play a good game there, and was later replaced by Birger Meling against Romania (4-0) and Northern Ireland (1-0).
Before the meeting, Aleesami trained with Lillestrøm from the Obosliga. Then he opened up a bit about what kinds of clubs he had said no to.
– There have been good economic offers, but not quite the project I am looking for. Much of Turkey, Greece and part of Eastern Europe, Aleesami told VG on October 2.
– What are you looking for?
– Now I have experimented a bit. He played in Serie A, where things were not so professional, I was in France, a bit the same there. You play in one of the top five leagues, but I’d rather drop a few leagues and play for a top-notch club with ambitions and a winning culture, Aleesami stated.
Now you may have a chance to do so in Rostov in the Russian Premier League, ranked the seventh best league in Europe. The club, originally a company team for the Rostelmasj combine factory, was number seven last season. He gave the Europa League a chance this fall, but there the Russians smoked for Maccabi Haifa in qualifying.
Aleesami descended with Palermo from Serie A in the spring of 2017 and played two seasons at Italian level two. A few months after the relegation, he revealed that the club had said no to a six million euro offer for him. Since then he experienced a lot of chaos during the period in Sicily:
The continuation was a season in Amiens, with another descent. Before leaving Scandinavia, he was very popular in the great Swedish IFK Gothenburg. The desire to go to a club in roughly the same hierarchy has affected your job search thinking.
– When you play to avoid relegation, there is usually a bad atmosphere in the locker room, between the coaching staff and the group of players. Now I have that experience, Aleesami founded in early October.
P.S! It is more uncertain how long Aleesami will keep Mathias Normann as a teammate in Rostov. The midfielder admitted that he envisioned moving into the next window, and VG was able to reveal last week that England’s Fulham considered picking up the Northerner before the window was closed.
