West Ham have a well established relationship with Slavia Prague. In October 2020 West Ham signed Vladimir Coufal for £5.3m. At the time he was a 28-year- old established Czech Republic international. He came highly recommended by Tomas Soucek who joined the Hammers in July 2020 following a loan spell, in a deal worth £19m. Like Coufal, Soucek was also a regular for the national team.
Fast forward five years later, and West Ham have had a £17.5m bid rejected by Slavia Prague for El-Hadji Malick Diouf. The Senegal youngster only joined in January 2024 for £2m and already has four international caps to his name.
The Czech club are reportedly holding out for £21.5M – a fee that would represent a record transfer fee for the Czech league and it remains uncertain whether West Ham will return with an improved offer.
Club President, Jaroslav Tvrdik appears to be searching for a bidding war for his prized asset. This comes despite previously pricing Abdullah Sima out of a move to West Ham, only to later accept a much lower bid from Brighton where Sima has since been loaned out repeatedly.
Meanwhile, Ollie Scarles, who is just one year younger than Diouf, is looking to establish himself in the West Ham first team. He has already caught the eye with impressive performances last season, including stand-out displays against Arsenal at the Emirates and Aston Villa, the latter earning him a Man of the Match award.
The idea of targeting lesser known leagues was intended to secure young talent affordably – without paying inflated transfer fees or wages. Adding to the confusion is the apparent lack of transfer activity between West Ham and another major Czech club, Sparta Prague – despite West Ham shareholder Daniel Kretinsky also owning the Czech side.
It is surprising that no loan arrangements or permanent transfers have been arranged, either for West Ham’s Academy youngsters to gain invaluable experience in European competitions, or for Sparta players to make the switch to London.
At the moment the tangible benefits of Daniel Kretinsky’s presence at West Ham remains highly debatable, unless he decides to buy out David Sullivan or acquire the 25% equity held by Vanessa Gold, which would then make him the majority shareholder.
Slavia Prague got him for £2m last year .. That’s the sort of deal we need to be doing .. We need to find players before Slavia Prague do .. At £2m it’s low risk …
It’s a fair comment in regards to Kretinski, why havnt we utilised this pathway and maybe a partnership?
It does show how inept this club is run.
We need a new professional majority owner.
Some Championship clubs are run better
Why would Kretinsky want to raid the best players from the club he’s a shareholder in? Of course he’d have no problem taking away the best players from one of Sparta Prague’s closest rivals. Obviously Kretinsky wants Sparta Prague to be the top team in Prague and not Slavia Prague.
Slavia Prague must be proper peed off with us knicking all their best players.
I suggest we all accept that Daniel Kretinsky is an investor. He’s interested in assets that make money. If and when West Ham get a serious take-over attempt, Kretinsky will be selling out and taking his profit.
He doesn’t seem interested in the actual football side of things.
surely the wise thing to do is let Scarles carry on developing otherwise he just takes a massive backward step after breaking through.20 Million
saved and a sign of intent to our academy players that they will get a chance if they impress.
All indications are that Emerson will be sold. So we need another left back. If Scarles is going to develop into a Premier League player he needs to be able to deal with competition for his place.
All well and good except for the fact that Scarles’ performances last season do not warrant a first team starting spot. He was pretty sound defensively, apart from the occasional positioning issue, but offered absolutely nothing going forward which is not good enough.
Hopefully he will develop that side of his game this season but it is not guaranteed. We need a starting left back/wing back.
£21.5m for Diouf did raise my eyebrow….
He looks reasonable but I wouldn’t say better than reasonable, it would be very dependent on how he improved which he should.
As long as he doesn’t come up against another Ron Harris he would be fine….