Dominic Solanke
Centre-Forward · Tottenham Hotspur · England
About Dominic Solanke
Dominic Solanke is one of English football's great redemption stories — a Chelsea and Liverpool (ENG) striker who struggled to score at the top level before transforming at Bournemouth into one of the Premier League's most prolific goal-scorers. Tottenham paid £65 million for him — confirmation of his belated arrival as a world-class centre-forward.
Dominic Solanke's story
Chelsea Roots and a Prolific Strike Partner
Solanke was born in Reading and raised in Basingstoke, joining Chelsea's academy at the age of seven. Academy coach Adi Viveash remembers a "quite shy boy" who formed a lethal strike partnership with fellow academy graduate Tammy Abraham; the pair scored 41 goals each in 2014-15 as Chelsea won the FA Youth Cup and UEFA Youth League. Solanke has also spoken of a memorable one-on-one training session with then-Chelsea captain John Terry.
The Bournemouth Transformation
Solanke came through Chelsea's academy and made a goalless stint at Liverpool (ENG) that seemed to suggest he would never fulfil his early promise. Bournemouth signed him for £19 million and gradually his confidence, game sense and fitness came together. In 2023-24 he scored 19 Premier League goals — one of the highest totals by any English striker — and Tottenham paid £65 million to sign him.
Tottenham's Main Man
At Tottenham, Solanke was given the responsibility of leading their attack — a significant role for a club with ambitions of competing for trophies. He fitted well into Ange Postecoglou's system as Spurs won the 2025 Europa League, though replicating that form for a new manager and a struggling side became the greater challenge that followed.
The Anime Superfan
Off the pitch, Solanke has become one of the Premier League's best-known anime fans. He has said the "relentless" mindset of anime protagonists who refuse to give up influences his own approach to the game, and he now coordinates his goal celebrations with team-mates ahead of matches.
Did you know?
- 🏆 Solanke won the FIFA Under-20 World Cup with England in 2017, earning the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player after scoring four goals, including twice in the semi-final win over Italy.
- 📈 His transformation from zero Premier League goals at Liverpool to 19 in a single season at Bournemouth is one of the competition's great individual turnaround stories.
- 👨👩👧 He married his long-time partner Erica Raimondi in June 2025; the couple, together since his Bournemouth years, have a daughter born in September 2023.
- 🍥 He discovered anime during the pandemic on friends' recommendation, starting with Naruto, which he watched "start to finish" and became "so addicted" to that he rewatched it; his favourite character is Zoro from One Piece.
- ⚔️ He has pulled off 10 different anime-character goal celebrations since October 2023, including One Piece's Trafalgar Law and Luffy, Naruto's Rock Lee and Obito Uchiha, and Jujutsu Kaisen's Satoru Gojo.
- 🎬 On a trip to Japan he toured an anime production studio and learned that a single 20-minute episode can take months to make; on a separate trip to Korea, he had himself turned into an animated character with his own voiceover.
- ⚽ At Chelsea, he trained alongside Didier Drogba, who Solanke says was "very honest" with him in finishing drills, pointing out what to improve rather than staying quiet.
- 😂 He has called Diego Costa "one of the funniest people I've met in football," with "a crazy personality, always messing about, pulling pranks" in the Chelsea dressing room.
- 🎗️ He was nominated, alongside Bethany England, as a 2025 PFA Community Champion for his work with the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation, including a Movember "Ahead of the Game" youth mental-resilience workshop at Lea Valley Academy.
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