The so-called "gem" of Scottish football's alphabet soup, Nedim Bajrami, was hatched on a snowy February night back in 1999 in Macedonia, thus making our not-so-wee chap about 25 years of age now. The lad’s got a fair career as a footballer ahead of him, hasn’t he? Or we’d like to think so anyway.
Primarily prancing about as a central attacking midfielder for none other than the blue half of Glasgow – Rangers, he stands at a barely behemoth-like 5ft 10in (1.79m if you enjoy the metric system, which you may very well do, you cosmopolitan readers, you). He tips the old bathroom scales at 10st 9lb (if you still use the kilogram system, that will be a hardly earth-shattering 68kg).
Now, this lad, he puffs his chest and dons the rather fanciful number 14 shirt - perhaps done in honour of Johan Cruyff, or more likely some middling chap from his days following European football obscurities. Our Bajrami has had the questionable honour of running around like a headless chicken for the Albania national team, as well.
According to the endlessly reliable e-quill of Transfermarkt, his market worth is roughly €4.50m, which translates to about £4m...type of money that might just get you a decent semi-detached in Glasgow’s more genteel postal codes.
Bajrami’s early footy years were spent hopscotching about Switzerland’s Super League with the Grasshoppers, where he made a sports almanac-worthy total of 69 league appearances and notched up a largely forgettable total of nine goals. In August 2019, our nomadic Macedonian moved from the alpine pastures of Switzerland to Empoli in Italy's Serie A, for what now seems a laughably prudent £430k.
Despite showing flashes of skill mixed with bouts of stunning mediocrity in the Italian league, he giggled his way through a whopping 118 appearances, and even managed to put the ball in the back of the net a staggering 17 times. Sassuolo, another somewhat recognisable name in Italian football, took the budget route and scooped him up on loan in 2023 before offering him a full-time gig at an eye-watering £5.2m.
In August 2024, the Rangers, either in a horrendous episode of misjudgement or a stroke of genius (only time will tell), parked about £3.5m to coax him to our bonnie Scotland. He’s only just scratched his beginnings here with 16 appearances and a single goal so far this season but who knows where this shaggy dog story will ultimately lead.
He's had his borrowed boots in several tournaments too, including the League Cup 2024 - 2025 for Rangers, Euro 2024 for Albania, Euro Qualifiers 2022 - 2024, Nations League 2024 - 2025, and the Europa League 2024 - 2025 for Rangers, scoring a combined smorgasbord of eight goals. Aye, let’s see how the lad turns out, shall we?
