Career transfer fees may pass €50m – Monaco to sign Adingra six months after joining Sunderland

Initial loan  

Sunderland look set to part ways with Simon Adingra just six months after the Ivory Coast winger made his move to the Stadium of Light. According to multiple reports, the 24-year-old talent looks set to complete a loan deal to Monaco on deadline day, with the Ligue 1 club reportedly paying an up-front fee of €1 million and an option to make the deal permanent for €18.5 million. Which would mean that Sunderland are set to lose a small amount of money on the winger they signed for €24.4m at the start of the season. Should that deal go through, it would mean that Adingra’s career to date would amass combined transfer fees of €52m – despite struggling to prove himself at two Premier League clubs.

Adingra first made a name for himself at Danish club Nordsjaelland, where he impressed as a young talent bagging 12 goals and four assists in 40 senior appearances. That led to Brighton signing Abobo-born talent just 18 months after his first-team debut in Denmark for €8m. The English side then immediately sent Adingra on loan to sister club Union SG in Belgium, where Adingra did even better with 15 goals and 14 assists in 51 games. That led to the Ivory Coast winger returning to Brighton in 2023, where he was flung straight into the Seagulls’ starting XI for much of their Premier League campaign, scoring six goals and one assists in 31 league appearances. However, when Brighton made changes in the dug-out in 2024, Adingra found himself tumbling down the pecking order under Fabian Hürzeler and eventually departed the club in the summer of 2025 for more game time.

Remarkably, Adingra remains Sunderland’s second most expensive signing ever and looked like something of a bargain when he provided an assist in his first league game for the Back Cats in a 3-0 win over West Ham. However, Adingra struggled for consistency after that and started just two of Sunderland’s next 15 league games and often found himself on the bench as an unused substitute. As such, a departure from the English club in January comes as no real surprise, with Adingra clearly hoping that a move to Monaco and Ligue 1 will provide a better opportunity for him to showcase the form he provided in Denmark and Belgium.