{"id":717,"date":"2026-03-10T20:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T20:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/?p=717"},"modified":"2026-03-10T20:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T20:14:11","slug":"brentford-owner-claims-they-were-close-to-signing-eberechi-eze-michael-olise-and-omar-marmoush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/?p=717","title":{"rendered":"Brentford owner claims they were close to signing Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise and Omar Marmoush"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Brentford had opportunities to sign Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise, Omar Marmoush, and Mykhailo Mudryk, according to owner Matthew Benham.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 57-year-old is a boyhood Brentford fan who has been part of the club\u2019s ownership setup since 2005. <\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference<\/a> on March 7, the British businessman revealed how the club, which was promoted to the Premier League for the first time in 2021, had the chance to sign multiple targets who have gone on to complete transfers to some of Europe\u2019s biggest clubs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are always going to be ones that you regret,\u201d Benham said. \u201cWe could have signed Eze for \u00a34million in 2019 and Marmoush on a free (transfer) about three years ago. \u201c<\/span><\/p>\n

Eze joined Crystal Palace in the summer of 2020 from Queens Park Rangers before moving to boyhood club Arsenal last summer for an initial fee of \u00a360million ($81.2m; \u20ac69.4m) plus a potential \u00a37.5m in add-ons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marmoush\u2019s contract expired at Wolfsburg in 2023, though he eventually joined Eintracht Frankfurt on a free transfer. He scored 20 goals and 14 assists in 26 appearances in the first half of the 2024-25 campaign, he completed a move to Manchester City in January 2025 worth around \u20ac70m to \u20ac75m plus bonuses.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Marmoush<\/p>\n
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\n Brentford also missed out on City forward Omar Marmoush. (Photo: Ed Sykes\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar via Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mudryk, signed for Chelsea in 2023 in a deal worth \u20ac70m, with a further \u20ac30m in add-ons. The Ukraine international was provisionally suspended by the FA in December for testing positive for a banned substance and was charged with a violation of the Football Association (FA)\u2019s anti-doping rules last summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe summer we got promoted to the Premier League, there were two players who scouted amazingly well,\u201d said Benham. \u201cOne was Mudryk, which would have been mega complicated if we signed him, but we were close to signing him for quite a low fee \u2014 \u20ac20m.<\/span><\/p>\n

Benham also spoke on Brentford\u2019s unsuccessful pursuit of then-Reading winger Olise, saying: \u201cHis scouting was unbelievable. Out of this world. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had just been promoted and were not used to the crazy agent fees in the Premier League at the time. The agent\u2019s fee was just so insanely high even though there was a part of us thinking that if you combined the transfer fee and the agent fee, it\u2019s not too bad. But the agent fee on its own was so insane that we stepped away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Eze, Palace pipped Brentford to signing Olise. He moved to Selhurst Park as a 19-year-old in the summer of 2021 for \u00a38m before joining Bayern Munich in the summer of 2024. <\/span><\/p>\n

Initially, Benham supported the club in the form of interest-free loans, but the Brentford\u2019s previous owners, the Bees United supporters\u2019 trust, voted to give him full control in 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, they have climbed from the third tier to the top flight, moved into a new stadium in 2020, and are now in their fifth straight season in the Premier League.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brentford had opportunities to sign Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise, Omar Marmoush, and Mykhailo Mudryk, according to owner Matthew Benham. The 57-year-old is a boyhood Brentford fan who has been part … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}