Acting as an intermediary to broker the deal, football agent Yahia Aly speaks to KingFut about the details of Mohamed Elneny’s transfer to Arsenal Football Club.

Egypt international Mohamed Elneny officially sealed his transfer to North London giants Arsenal earlier on Thursday; this saga was far from an easy one to conclude.

Yahia Aly, an intermediary to broker the deal, and English company Base Soccer Agency, represented by Alaa Nazmy, had spent plenty of time and effort to get the deal over the line. It didn’t all happen in one month, however, as there had been contact for quite some time now. “Arsenal initially started their contact around eight months ago,” Aly exclusively told KingFut.

Surely, after gaining recognition in this season’s UEFA Europa League campaign with his impressive performances for FC Basel, other top clubs came in for the Egyptian defensive midfielder. “I can not confirm which clubs were interested, but I can tell you that there was contact from Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1,” Yahia Aly revealed.

Yahia had a huge hand in some of the biggest transfers in Egypt’s history, most notable taking Mohamed Salah and Mohamed Elneny to FC Basel three years ago, Salah to Chelsea afterwards, as well as sending Mahmoud Kahraba to Swiss club Luzern, Ahmed Hamoudi to FC Basel and Mahmoud Hassan Trezeguet to RSC Anderlecht of Belgium.





It is interesting to note that Arsenal were prepared for the event that the transfer may take long to finalise and had sent their strength and conditioning coach Sam Wilson to keep the 23-year-old in shape. “Yes, Arsenal sent Sam Wilson around 10 days ago to keep Elneny fit ahead of his signing,” Yahia said.

It was widely reported that Elneny’s transfer fee cost Arsenal £7 million, but KingFut.com revealed on Thursday that it was not the case, to which Yahia confirmed: “I assure you, the fee is much higher than that what’s reported.”

“I am just pleased and proud that this is the second biggest deal in Egypt’s history that I am involved in after Mohamed Salah’s transfer to Chelsea,” Aly concluded.