Artem Dovbyk has admitted that he turned his nose up at the chance to help West Ham United escape the Premier League relegation zone in favour of remaining at Roma.
Initially, you might think the Ukraine international is pretty happy with his choice.
West Ham United are preparing for a season in the Championship, after all. Roma have the Champions League theme tune to look forward to, ending their seven-year absence from Europe’s elite club competition.
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Whether Dovbyk will play any part in that, though, is currently in doubt.
Because, relegation or no relegation, the feeling is that West Ham dodged a bullet with the former Girona targetman.
Roma striker Artem Dovbyk rejected West Ham United approach in January
Dovbyk would play only two minutes of Serie A football after turning down a January approach from East London, a hamstring injury making him the forgotten man of Roma’s Champions League charge.
“For me, this season was a failure, also due to injuries,” Dovbyk told Ukrainian YouTube channel Rosso Dritto. “In the summer, I was close to joining Milan. Then, in January, there was West Ham.
“But I wanted to finish the season at Roma. Now I want to understand if there’s still room for me.”
Ironically enough, West Ham would turn to Roma’s local rivals Lazio after being given the cold shoulder by Dovbyk. Taty Castellanos ended the campaign with six goals in 17 Premier League starts.
While the all-action Argentine has his critics – Castellanos can make the difficult look routine and the routine look difficult – at least he was fit enough and mobile enough to provide West Ham with the potency they needed in the final third.
It is difficult to imagine Dovbyk, struck down for the last four months of the campaign by a hamstring issue, providing the same levels of athleticism or availability.
January was not the first time the Hammers had shown an interest, meanwhile.
Dovbyk confirmed he spoke to West Ham boss Julen Lopetegui in 2024, when he was coming off a Golden Boot-winning La Liga campaign with a Champions League-bound Girona. The 6ft 2ins targetman would instead opt to join Roma for a hefty £26 million. One million less than the Hammers ended up paying for Castellanos some 18 months later.
Dovbyk spoke to Julen Lopetegui about joining the Hammers in 2024
Fifteen goals in 30 Serie A starts for the Rossoneri may seem like a respectable return on paper.
But considering the size of the price-tag, and the fact that Dovbyk has missed a staggering 34 games since the start of 2024/25 through injury, it would be a stretch to suggest he would have been the man to keep them in the Premier League.
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“Lopetegui was the coach of West Ham at the time,” adds Dovbyk. “He called Michel [the coach at Girona] and asked him. Then Michel told me about him. I was told about him that he was a top guy.
“They showed me everything, how they see it [working out at West Ham]. The coach, I talked to him. He told me everything, like how he wanted to use me there.”
Dovbyk confirms that he then held discussions with Roma boss Daniele de Rossi and, quickly, his mind was made up.
West Ham would then shift their focus to Niclas Fullkrug. With only four league goals in two full seasons for the now-33-year-old German, Fullkrug makes even an underwhelming Dovbyk look prolific.
Heading into pre-season, while Fullkrug clearly has no future at West Ham, Dovbyk is none the wiser about his own fate at the Stadio Olimpico.
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