\n The Frenchman joins after the departure of both Dean Huijsen and Illia Zabarnyi to Real Madrid and PSG, for a fee of\u00a0\u20ac35million plus\u00a0\u20ac5million in add-ons.\n<\/p>\n
\n That fee is the second-most the club has paid for a player, after they bought Evanilson for a total fee of up to\u00a0\u00a340.2million.\n<\/p>\n
\n The centre back told the club website:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m really happy to be here and I\u2019m very excited to start with the team. I know the coach has great ideas which enables us to play well in the Premier League. Now I\u2019m at the club, it\u2019s a good opportunity to show how I can help the team going forward.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Peter Byrne\/PA Wire) \u201cI\u2019m a defender who likes to have the ball and play with it, and I hope to show my qualities both with and without it. I will give everything for the team and I hope we will have some great moments together.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n President of football operations, Tiago Pinto, said: \u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to welcome Bafod\u00e9 to the club.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cHe is someone that has already played a lot of games despite still being early on in his career, and his ambition is something that matches that of the club very well.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019re really pleased to add him to our squad alongside our other new additions in Adrian Truffert and Djordje Petrovic, as well as Junior Kroupi who has been with the team this summer.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Diakite is the club\u2019s third signing of the summer, after keeper Djordje Petrovic and left back Adrien Truffert.\n<\/p>\n
\n The latter two signings replaced the outgoing Kepa and Milos Kerkez, with the Spaniard returning to Chelsea from his loan before moving to Arsenal, and the Hungarian joining Liverpool.\n<\/p>\n
\n Huijsen departed for Madrid after the Spanish giants activated his \u00a350m release clause, and Zabarnyi\u2019s move to PSG was confirmed by the club on Tuesday, for a fee of \u20ac63m with \u20ac3m in add-ons.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Diakite is the first centre back the Cherries have signed this summer, with Andoni Iraola making it clear that he needs two in the remainder of the window, to ensure Huijsen and Zabarnyi are replaced.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n The 24-year-old joins on a five-year deal, signing a contract until 2030, and will wear the number 18 shirt at the club.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n He has played 112 times for Lille, with 48 appearances last season, scoring 13 total goals, with four of those in the 24\/25 campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Frenchman joins after the departure of both Dean Huijsen and Illia Zabarnyi to Real Madrid and PSG,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[94,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-340875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115020929832316214","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}