Five English players who made shock transfer moves abroad: Morrison, Abraham, Bellingham…

Jesse Lingard might soon become the latest Englishman to up sticks from his homeland and take up a new challenge in another country.

The former Manchester United and West Ham star has been without a club since he left Nottingham Forest in the summer. He looks to be on the cusp of delivering a massive shock by heading to South Korean side FC Seoul.

Lingard would not be the first Englishman to make a surprise move abroad to continue his career.

Here, TEAMtalk looks at five players who left their home in England to take up a new challenge abroad.

Ravel Morrison

A former member of the Manchester United academy alongside Lingard himself and Paul Pogba – which led to an iconic photo including the trio after winning the FA Youth Cup – Morrison looked to have the tools to succeed in senior football.

Legendary Red Devil Rio Ferdinand once said former United boss Sir Alex Ferguson believed Morrison was “the best player he had seen at that age” when he was coming through the ranks.

But he only managed three senior appearances for the Old Trafford outfit, before bouncing around West Ham, Birmingham, Queens Park Rangers and Cardiff with little success.

Since he was released by the Hammers in 2015, Morrison has cropped up in a number of interesting locations across the globe, including: Lazio, Atlas Guadalajara, Ostersund, ADO Den Haag and DC United.

Only at Mexican side Atlas did he make more than 20 appearances – the most he has ever made with one club is 38 at Derby – and his slide from England under-21 recognition in his early career has culminated in him currently being without a club.

Tammy Abraham

After years of biding his time out on loan from Chelsea, Tammy Abraham finally got a proper chance with the Blues in the 2019/20 season.

A transfer ban meant no new talent could walk through the door at Stamford Bridge for that campaign, and Abraham had just come off a red-hot season with Aston Villa in the Championship, where he scored 25 goals, before netting another in the playoffs as Villa went up.

Aa such, he was given the nod up top and in his first full season with Chelsea, Abraham netted 15 Premier League goals – the most of any Blues player – and assisted four times.

The following campaign, while he was deserving of keeping his place, he was given less opportunities, so when former Blues boss Jose Mourinho’s Roma came calling, the striker was happy to make the £35million move.

Abraham has netted 36 goals and assisted 12 since he moved to the Serie A side in 2021, and has played one less game for England since the move than he did before it, but has scored more for the Three Lions since.

Jude Bellingham

A £25million transfer and the retirement of the squad number for a 17-year-old with less than 50 senior appearances was unheard of before Jude Bellingham came around.

However, there was clearly something very special about him from an early age, and Birmingham received the hefty fee from Borussia Dortmund after his first season highlighted his talent very clearly.

Englishmen had made moves abroad to further their career before, as this article clearly shows, but never had somebody made such a splash at such a young age that they had a club who had reached the knockout stages of the Champions League in five out of the last six seasons willing to pay £25million.

As well as the Bundesliga giants, Manchester United were looking into his signing, but Dortmund were seen as the right club for Bellingham to make the step up with, and he’ll be glad he chose them, as while at the time the massive move came as a surprise, he’s now ripping it up with Real Madrid after three seasons in Germany.

Jiang Guangtai (Tyias Browning)

The reason the name Jiang Guangtai does not sound familiar is because he went by Tyias Browning when he was in England.

Born in Liverpool, the defender came through the ranks at Everton, playing over 100 under-21 games for the Toffees before he featured in senior football nine times.

Alongside his club football exploits, he also worked his way up the ladder in international football with England, playing under-17, under-19 and under-20 football, while also being named in an under-21 squad.

His departure from Goodison Park four years after his senior debut was an eyebrow raiser, as he made the shock move to Chinese side Guangzhou Evergrande.

The centre-back’s maternal grandmother is Chinese, and as such he qualifies to play for the country’s national team. His debut for China came in 2021, two years after he’d moved to play club football in the country, and a year after he switched allegiances from England.

Jiang has made over 100 appearances in China since he first moved to Evergrande – 61 came for them and 43 have come since he moved to Shanghai Port in 2022. He’s also played more than 20 times for the Chinese national team.

Fikayo Tomori

Fikayo Tomori moved on from Chelsea at around the same time as Abraham, and his career up until the transfer was rather similar to his former teammate. Indeed, the centre-back had also been on multiple Football League loans before getting his chance with the Blues.

Unlike Abraham, though, his role was never a particularly consistent one once he did break into the first-team of his boyhood club.

Tomori made a total of 27 Chelsea appearances and in the season before he left, he was afforded the chance to play in just 15 games in the Premier League.

As such, it was something of a surprise that European giants AC Milan were willing to pay the Blues a total package of £30million for the defender that summer.

Tomori will be glad they did, though, as he played the same amount of games in his first season in Italy as he had in his entire Chelsea career, and he won the Serie A title in his second campaign.