AARON HICKEY has completed his protracted £1.5m move to Bologna from Hearts, with Celtic pocketing a cool £450,000 from the deal.
Hickey, 18, agreed terms on a four-year contract with the Serie A outfit more than a fortnight ago but the transfer was held up due to problems with his registration.
However, the paperwork was finally rubber-stamped on Thursday and, given the precocious left-back has been in full training with I Rossoblù since last week, he could make his debut against Parma next Monday.
Mitchell Dijks, ahead of Hickey in the Bologna pecking order, was sent off in their opening day defeat against Milan, paving the way for Hickey to follow in the footsteps of Denis Law, Joe Jordan, Graeme Souness and Liam Henderson by immediately featuring in the Italian top-flight.
Hearts made the decision to cash in on Hickey as he entered the final year of his Tynecastle contract, with the player making it clear he had no interest in penning a new deal.
It is understood Celtic will benefit to the tune of 30 per cent of the transfer fee after inserting a sell-on clause in his move from Parkhead to the Jambos in the summer of 2018.
The Hoops attempted to tempt him back to Glasgow, Bayern Munich gave him a VIP tour of their facilities and the likes of Manchester City, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest all chased Hickey throughout this summer.
However, the promise of first-team opportunities and the lure of Serie A convinced Hickey that his future lay in Italy under the watchful eye of legendary former defender Sinisa Mihajlovic.
He departs Tynecastle after making 32 appearances for Hearts, including a shock starting berth in the 2019 Scottish Cup final defeat against Celtic.
He scored one goal, a memorable deflected winner in the 2-1 triumph over Hibs last September.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel