loudmouthblue
Vital Football Hero
Just had a quick look at him, he started his senior career in Belgium second tier before moving to Portugal for a couple of second tier sides there. He made a good 100 or so appearances by the time he was in his early 20's at those 3 clubs but his goals and assists weren't anything to shout about.
But since moving to Zamalek in Egypt about 4 years ago he's had a 1 in 2 goal contribution record (33 goals, 22 assists in 101 league games according to Transfermarrkt.com).
Considering we've been so conservative in the market so far, paying 2.6m for one player from Egypt would seem a big gamble. I'd never heard of him before so maybe this lad is a genuine world beater and he's worth every penny, but at the same time any player coming in from a foreign league adapting isn't a given so you would wonder if that huge chunk of our budget could be spread out over a few good players domestically. If there is any truth in the story in the first place. Unless we believe there is some type of significant commercial value in signing an Arabic player that would help to recoup the outlay for him. In which case - that makes a lot more sense.
For anyone interested in some clips of what he's like.
A fellow latic's fans son is a translator and a fluent Arabic speaker, he sent the article to his son to see if it was correct, he said that the translation was badly done and misleading, the figure of 57 million Egyptian pounds is incorrect and actually reads 5-7 million which means the figure is just over 300k and not £2.45 million based on the wording of the translation.