Former £13.5m Everton forward signs for Macclesfield in shock move

Former Everton striker Oumar Niasse has officially signed for Macclesfield FC.

The 33-year-old has been without a club since the end of last season after leaving Morecombe after joining in March on a short-term deal - and he has signed a similar deal with the Cheshire club.

As it stands, Macclesfield feature in the Northern Premier League which, with the Isthmian League and the Southern League, forms levels seven and eight of the English football league system which is a drop-off from playing for Morecambe in League 2 last season.

Niasse signed for Everton in 2016 for £13.5m from Lokomotiv Moscow where he made his name after netting 19 times and providing 14 assists in 40 games. However, his time at Everton was particularly rocky.

Niasse's time at Everton

He joined in the January window of 2016, but failed to net in any of his five appearances. Manager Ronald Koeman then informed him in the summer that he would have to look for a new club, with the Dutch manager quoted as saying: "If Niasse likes to play football he needs to leave Everton."

Despite that, he remained with the squad and was given a squad number but in October 2016, Niasse was demoted to the under-23 squad and had his personal locker revoked - a decision which he contested.

“It’s sad, it’s really sad,” Niasse told the Guardian in 2016. “And, to be honest, I think I don’t deserve this but what I can do is just keep my head and fight to change things. I’m not going to make a drama over this. I just deal with it. I know it’s just one period.”

Following that, he joined up with Hull City in the subsequent January but failed to help keep them up despite scoring five times in 19 games.

He then returned to Everton for the start of the 2017/18 season, he then went on to net eight times in the league and once in the EFL Cup but only played 27 times across all competitions after being omitted from Koeman's Europa League squad.

At the start of the 2018/19 season, he barely featured before heading to Cardiff City on loan in January, but he failed to net across 20 appearances for both clubs in the league or EFL Cup.

Eventually, he was released in 2020 and then went on to train with Huddersfield in 2021 but failed to make a single appearance. After that, he had short spells at Burton Albion and Morecambe and had been a free agent since the summer before making the move to Macclesfield.