Guilherme Admission Exposes How Badly West Ham Handled £20m Wonderkid

Luís Guilherme has opened up on just how difficult his first months at West Ham were — and for me, his comments only underline how badly the club handled one of Brazil’s brightest young talents.

Speaking to O Jogo, Guilherme admitted: “The first three months were very difficult for me because of everything: not only football, but the country, the language and the culture.”

He also revealed that, at one stage, he thought he might only remain at West Ham for around six months. For a teenager signed for close to £20m, that is quite an admission — particularly when you consider what happened next.

West Ham Bought A Project Without A Plan

For years West Ham had talked about recruiting younger players with huge potential, and Guilherme was supposed to represent exactly that kind of signing. He arrived from Palmeiras as one of Brazil’s most highly-rated prospects during a frantic 2024 transfer window, but instead of being the start of a coherent new strategy, his signing became another example of the scattergun recruitment which was taking place at the club.

Guilherme was brought in by then Director of Football Tim Steidten, under the suspicious gaze of David Sullivan, while Julen Lopetegui was preparing a team for immediate results. That was always going to be a strange fit, and I never got the impression Lopetegui particularly trusted Steidten’s signings generally, never mind a teenage Brazilian winger who didn’t naturally fit the manager’s system.

In essence, West Ham signed a long-term development project for a manager who was always likely to have a short shelf life at the London Stadium.

The Biggest Failure Came Afterwards

Time will tell whether Guilherme himself was actually a bad signing. What is far harder to defend is what West Ham did once it became obvious he wasn’t going to be a regular first-team player.

He wasn’t loaned out, he wasn’t given proper sustained football with the Under-21s and he wasn’t getting meaningful minutes with the senior team either. He was simply left in limbo, which was something I wrote about when Guilherme finally left the club, because the frustrating thing was that West Ham never properly tested him at any level.

The club had previously insisted he was needed as immediate first-team back-up, with a senior source telling Claret & Hugh that he would not be sent out on loan. That decision looks even stranger with hindsight because West Ham ended up with the worst of all worlds: a young player who wasn’t playing enough for the first team but wasn’t developing elsewhere either.

West Ham Never Found Out What They Had

By the time Guilherme eventually joined Sporting, the whole thing had become a huge waste of opportunity. As we wrote when his exit was being completed, three different West Ham managers had failed to give him a sustained run.

West Ham ultimately moved him on for a deal worth a guaranteed £14m, with further add-ons and a sell-on clause attached. The final numbers showed the club had largely escaped without a catastrophic financial loss, but financially surviving the mistake isn’t the same as having handled the player properly.

Guilherme may yet turn out not to be good enough for the very highest level, but West Ham never really gave themselves the chance to find out. His admission that he was already struggling badly within his first three months only makes the absence of any proper development plan look even worse.