West Ham United trail only Chelsea for spending in Europe after Lucas Paqueta deal
West Ham completed what should become their record buy when they sealed the deal for Lucas Paqueta at a total cost of €61.63million, Manuel Veth reports.
The Forbes journalist also noted that Italian giants AC Milan will receive 15% of the profit from what he called a “remarkable deal”.
In his story for Transfermarkt using the numbers published by Lyon, everything is laid out to show that if all the performance related bonuses are met that could total €6.24million [£5.3million].
Having moved to Lyon from San Siro for €20million, the profit for the Ligue 1 side is over €40million, after the Hammers sent an up-front fee of €42.95million, with a further €18.68million in add-ons.
The €45million signing of Sebastien Haller is therefore currently still the Irons’ record purchase, but that should quickly be surpassed once the new Brazilian arrival starts to feature for West Ham.
As the Transfermarkt story points out, the base fee takes the Hammers’ spending this summer before bonuses are considered to a total of €182million, putting them behind only London rivals Chelsea as the biggest spenders in Europe.
In business
Amid an uncertain start to the season in terms of results the club cannot be accused of scrimping on their attempts to lift fortunes at the London Stadium.
When the January transfer window passed with a lot of noise but no actual signings there was a fear that this side would be held back from reaching the next level under David Moyes.
Although that still has to go down as a missed opportunity given where the team was in the Premier League and Europa League at the time, things have been very different this summer.
With a new striker sourced at long last in Gianluca Scamacca, and a headline defender in the currently-injured Nayef Aguerd, along with a selection of arrivals to flesh out the squad before Paqueta’s massive deal, the club have invested heavily.
With such a contrast in terms of the market activity, and in light of a difficult opening to the league campaign, fans will hope that Moyes is ready to manage so many new arrivals.
He has worked wonders in his time at the club and he has finally been seriously backed, with the Irons showing the sort of intent that surely won’t have gone unnoticed by captain Declan Rice when he considers his future.
Putting it together on the pitch and building on the much-needed first win at Aston Villa on Sunday is now the priority to see a real return on the investment.