As West Ham United look ahead to August’s Championship curtain raiser away to Burnley, over in Germany, Bayern Munich strengthened from a position of almighty strength with the £52 million signing of World Cup sensation Ismael Saibari.
Hammers News revealed back in 2025 that then-PSV Eindhoven star Saibari had caught West Ham’s eye.
In truth, any pursuit of the Morocco international looked highly ambitious from the very beginning. Ismail Saibari had reservations about moving clubs mid-season with a World Cup on the horizon.
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And as January arrived with West Ham United up to their necks in relegation danger, one suspects that Saibari would have had even less motivation to swap a third-successive Eredivisie title for a dogfight down the bottom of the Premier League.
On Wednesday, one day after Saibari’s Morocco knocked out Crysencio Summerville’s Netherlands and eight months after Hammers News revealed West Ham’s interest, the Spanish-born 25-year-old completed a £52 million move to Bayern Munich.
And the completion of his mega-money transfer only exacerbates the very different directions Saibari and West Ham have moved in since those initial November reports.
West Ham United liked Bayern Munich newbie Ismael Saibari
Saibari had already proven himself to be a ‘special’ talent in Dutch football. Ending 2025/26 with a career-high 19 goals, and then a further three at the World Cup, lifted Saibari onto another plane entirely.
As for West Ham, any hopes they might have had of battling for his signature were officially vanquished on the day their relegation was confirmed. The financial power of the Premier League might just have given the Hammers an outside chance of battling Bayern.
Not now, obviously.
“As a child, you dream of signing a contract with a club like FC Bayern; everybody knows it’s one of the world’s biggest clubs,” Saibari told the official Bayern website.
“FC Bayern compete for the biggest titles like the Champions League every year, and I want to win as many trophies as possible here. FC Bayern’s play suits me, I can play my own style of football here, and I’ll work hard every day to help the team.
“Coach Vincent Kompany played a key role in my decision. I’m looking forward to working with him.”
Saibari has scored three times for Morocco at the World Cup
Board member Max Eberl highlighted Saibari’s ‘extra quality and unpredictability’; two attributes that came in handy when he lobbed Alisson in a 1-1 draw against Brazil before thumping home a 72-second volley against Scotland across the Atlantic.
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Christoph Freund, Bayern’s sporting director, opted to focus on Saibari’s Champions League experience, his versatility, intensity, and a swagger that means ‘fans flock to the stadium for players like him’.
Following relegation, and as West Ham prepare to announce the arrival of Nils Koppen as their new recruitment chief, the order of the day appears to be ‘proven’ Championship talents and young, hungry prospects with considerable re-sale potential.
Demotion does not mean West Ham cannot pull off some extremely good bits of business in the transfer market.
But it also ensured that the more ambitious targets – Saibari, for instance – have long since left the table.
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