Back in the Champions League this season, RC Lens will break the bank to get their new striker, who will be Montpellier’s Elye Wahi.
Casually, it is a defining moment in the history of RC Lens that is unfolding. The artesian club is about to make the biggest transfer in its history. According to Foot Mercato and RMC, Elye Wahi has thus decided to join the Sang et Or, who for their part have reached an agreement with Montpellier for the transfer.
The amount of the transaction? It would be around 35 million euros, including bonuses. It is therefore significantly more than the 16 million euros spent last summer to recruit Loïs Openda at FC Bruges. Wahi arrives precisely to replace the Belgian striker, sold to Leipzig. And it is clear that Lens has reinvested a large part of the sum recovered with Openda, whose transfer to Germany is estimated at 43 million euros, plus 6 million euros in bonuses. That says a lot about Lensoise ambitions this season before returning to the Champions League.
With Elye Wahi, Lens recovers a player who comes out of a season with 19 goals in Ligue 1 (almost as much as Openda, which had scored 21, to continue the comparison). The French international hopeful is for 40 years the second youngest player to have reached the bar of 25 goals in the French championship, behind a certain Kylian Mbappé. Wahi was coveted by West Ham and followed by Frankfurt, but he chose Lens to continue his progress. The transfer should complete very quickly.
