Said Benrahma transferred to Lyon again as Ligue 1 side finds escape despite West Ham deadline drama
FIFA has given the green light to West Ham's Said Benrahma to complete his move to Lyon.
The Algerian was left in limbo at the deadline when a £15m deal to take him to France unexpectedly fell through.
Benrahma spent much of Thursday undergoing a medical in London and finalizing his move to France, but the clubs were unable to complete the deal, leaving Lyon furious.
The Ligue 1 club had planned for Benrahma to sign his contract live on television, but things quickly unraveled even though Lyon had registered all the relevant details in FIFA's Transfer Management System (TMS) at the time. 10:30 p.m. on Thursday night.
Lyon later accused the Hammers of botching the paperwork and published a strongly worded statement saying West Ham had shown a “profound lack of respect” before describing the club's conduct as incomprehensible behaviour.
The seven-time French champions took the case to FIFA, which opened an immediate investigation into why the Hammers were unable to complete deals on deadline for both Benrahma and Pablo Fornals who was set for a £6.8million move to Real Betis.
World football's governing body has paved the way for Benrahma to join Lyon, the club's CEO Laurent Prud'homme revealed during a press conference on Friday.
“I just received a text message from FIFA,” he told reporters. “They have accepted the TMS certificate for Benrahma's transfer. It happened as we speak. Our efforts are bearing fruit.”
While things appear to be going in the right direction for the winger, there are still some administrative tasks to be done before the deal can be finalized.
“The FA must now send the International Transfer Certificate to France,” clarified talkSPORT football journalist Ben Jacobs.
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“FIFA considered that the 'participant' (Lyon) followed the protocol and entered the information correctly and usually when this is the case a transfer can be saved.”
Lyon's American owner John Textor also said at the press conference: “The Benrahma story seems like it's going to be an ongoing story for, I don't know if it will be several hours or a couple of days.”
Meanwhile, LaLiga side Betis are still hopeful of completing a deal for Fornals with “a computer problem” on West Ham's part the reason for the delay.
“Hopefully it can be solved,” the Spanish club's general director, Ramón Alarcón, said Friday morning.
“What happened with Pablo Fornals happened at the last moment. There has been a computer incident, we have worked on it to be able to justify it. Betis has delivered the documents in a timely manner. West Ham seem to have had a problem with their IT tools. It has not only been in the case of Betis, but also in other cases.
“We hope it will be resolved in the coming days. We are working on it and we are optimistic, although we have to be cautious in these things.”
