Insider ExWHUemployee has claimed that West Ham United’s past involvement with Eintracht Frankfurt could prevent a transfer for Filip Kostic.
According to a recent report in The Guardian, the Hammers have just submitted a bid for the wingback who could be valued in the region of €20m (£17m).
While we await to hear more developments on whether or not that bid will be accepted, Ex has warned of one key issue that could prevent the deal from getting across the line.
Indeed, he explained that when West Ham signed Sebastien Haller from Frankfurt in the past, an issue with payments caused the German club’s chairman to grow frustrated, and so this could hamper negotiations for Kostic.
While speaking on The West Ham Way podcast, Ex said: “Another bit of interesting information to note is that Eintracht Frankfurt – the club that sold us Sebastien Haller – we had issues with the payments [for him] and their chairman got very frustrated with our chairman over payments.
“So I’d imagine there’s a little bit of frostiness between the chairman, and it all came over instalments. So if we’re going to sign Kostic, I think Frankfurt are gonna expect us to put up a lot of money upfront rather than instalments.
“Will this put David Sullivan off – who likes instalments? We will see.”
Will West Ham land Filip Kostic this summer?
Yes
No
TIF thoughts on Filip Kostic and West Ham…
The Hammers spent a club-record £45m fee on signing Haller from the Bundesliga outfit back in 2019, so it’s not hard to understand why they wanted to pay the deal off in instalments.
However, West Ham clearly had some issues paying back that money, so Frankfurt may be wary of dealing with the Premier League club again, as Ex warns.
Still, if Kostic is valued at only £17m, it might not be quite so hard for West Ham to stump that cash up immediately. All in all, this transfer does feel as though it could come down to the relationship between each club’s chairman – which could be worrying if that ‘frostiness’ still exists.