Mohammed Kudus ended up joining West Ham from Ajax in the summer (MB Media/Getty)
By Hughie Southon
Mo Kudus’ move to West Ham has been hailed as a masterstroke by the club’s recruitment team.
The Ghana international is slowly showing himself to be one heck of a player who has scored goals in Europe and a very important equaliser against Newcastle in the Premier League.
However it has now been revealed he almost slipped through our fingers and would have done had Chelsea been more on the case when moving in for him. Thankfully the Ghana international is now ours but it could have been very different according to a report in The Metro.
For the report claims that the player’s agent has revealed the Stamford Bridge outfit failed with a ‘ridiculous’ offer to sign the midfielder ahead of ourselves. He ended up being allowed to exit Ajax in the summer transfer window for €41.5 million plus a further €3m (£2.5m) in add-ons.
Now he agent Jennifer Mendelewitsch, has revealed he was offered Paris Saint-Germain before Chelsea who had shown an interest. However, she explained the initial offer was in the region of €15m to €20m (£17.4m to £23.2m) and that after talks with manager Mauricio Pochettino a contract was agreed.
Mendelewitsch told RMC Sport: ‘He [Kudus] wanted to leave, there weren’t 50,000 clubs who needed a midfielder and could afford him. Obviously, we offered him to PSG. Now, it’s the club’s choice not to not move forward. All clubs have the right to decide that they go to another profile or that it is not their priority. ‘It’s a shame because I think Mohammed Kudus would have been a suitable profile.
‘We reached an agreement with Chelsea, we agreed contractually with Chelsea but the deal did not happen. He spoke with the coach [Pochettino] but in the end it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because Chelsea made a ridiculous offer to Ajax. ‘There was no counter-offer . Actually, Chelsea did this to a lot of players this summer with very low offers to clubs knowing they wouldn’t be accepted.
‘The truth is that they were completely taken by the transfer of Brighton’s Caicedo which used all their energy.”