A bank guarantee blows up the deal of the season: why did Al-Ittihad fail to sign Haj Moussa?

An impossible condition from Feyenoord denies the club the Algerian player

The longest transfer saga at Saudi club Al-Ittihad has ended in shock. The club had the player's approval and his explicit desire to join. Negotiations had reached their final stages. Yet the most expensive deal of this summer collapsed at the last moment, and not for a purely financial reason.

Saudi newspaper "Asharq Al-Awsat" revealed that Al-Ittihad's negotiations with Dutch club Feyenoord over Algerian winger Anis Hadj Moussa have officially collapsed. The two parties had reached a preliminary agreement last Wednesday that would have seen the player transfer for 27 million euros, rising to 29 million with add-ons, on a four-year contract.

Al-Ittihad did not stop there. As Feyenoord requested more add-ons and conditions, the Saudi club gradually raised its offer to meet the wishes of German coach Jens Vissing, who made the player his top priority after the deal for Japan's Ritsu Doan fell through.

The final offer reached 37.5 million euros as a base value, with incentives and add-ons that could push the total to 42 million euros. It was a major financial sacrifice, with the executive committee and the sporting management raising the ceiling by more than 10 million euros above the amount initially planned.

But value was never the obstacle Al-Ittihad could not overcome. The problem lay in the mechanism for securing it. Feyenoord demanded a full bank guarantee to ensure their financial payments, and Al-Ittihad's management considered that impossible under the current circumstances.

According to the Saudi newspaper, providing this guarantee would have meant placing up to a full 42 million euros in a dedicated, frozen account, pledged until the agreed payment dates. That would paralyse the club's ability to touch this huge liquidity throughout the period of the commitment.

Freezing the money in this way strikes Al-Ittihad as neither possible nor logical, especially after the major financial concessions they had already made.

Feyenoord's management had originally leaned towards selling the player and cashing in on the historic fee. But there was no full internal agreement inside the Dutch club. Both the sporting director and the coach were reserved about losing their star, which gave them a pretext to cling to the bank guarantee as a condition. So ended one of the most complicated negotiations of Al-Ittihad's transfer window, with the club having everything except the guarantee.