**West Ham have signed England U19 star Divine Mukasa on a season-long loan from Manchester City.**
You might recognise the name, and it’s not Divin Mubama that left West Ham for Manchester City a couple of years ago, it’s Divine Mukasa, who also left the Hammers for the Citizens a year before aged just fifteen.
Mukasa was one of if not the highest rated player in ‘The academy of football’ when he was in East London. The Newham born midfielder was at the club for ten years, joining at the age of five.
He broke through in the U18s team at just aged 15, he was part of the 2022/23 FA Youth Cup winning team, before going on to make his U21 debut when he was still only fifteen, crazy.
However, because he was not yet sixteen he was yet to sign professional terms with the Hammers. This allowed City to sweep in and take the youngster without much competition. He was very keen on the move.
At 18 years old now, Mukasa has had a positive time in Manchester, training with the likes of Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva, as well as a loan at Leicester. However, you can’t help but think he would’ve been better off staying in East London.
George Earthy made his Hammers debut just a few months after Mukasa left. If he stayed around it probably would have been him that got that chance because he has a lot more potential than the 21-year-old.
In fact, Mukasa is coming in to replace Earthy who has recently departed the club for League One side Reading. If Mukasa thinks the next step for him is coming back to West Ham, then maybe he is regretting his decison to leave, who knows?
Well that’s in the past now, he’s back in East London and I think this is a really good signing. The fans were desperate for an attacking mdifielder to come in. However, from what we’ve seen of Nuno so far he doesn’t want to play one, whether or not that’s because he haasn’t had one he’s liked or he’d rather play a front two, I’m not sure.
But now we’ve got Mukasa, hopefully a player Nuno wants, it gives us the option to play with a number ten if one or two of the strikers aren’t performing. The 18-year-old can also play out wide on the right and as a striker if needed, so he could get a lot of minutes in claret and blue this season.
It’s strange to loan back someone the club spent ten years growing as a player, but it’s the situation we’re in. We’re in the Championship and Mukasa is a player that could really make an impact at this level.
He spent the second half of the season at Leicester City in what was a disaster season for them as they were relegated to League One. In 15 Championship matches he scored twice and provided three assists. Quite intrestingly all of those goal contributions were in the first four matches. In his next eleven appearances they only won one, they had thrown the towel in.
In what is hopefully going to be the best team, and a ball-dominant team in the Championship, West Ham could be the perfect place for him to show his skill. And who knows, if he performs maybe we can get him back on loan next season, or even permanently with a buy-back clause as City like to do.