When it first emerged that Oh Hyeon-gyu was on the verge of a €28m move to Bundesliga club VfB Stuttgart towards the end of the summer transfer window last month, there was amazement, disbelief even, in the East End of Glasgow.
Is this the same Oh Hyeon-gyu who played for Celtic for a season or two? The South Korean striker who never really managed to establish himself as a regular first team starter? The guy who was bought from Suwon Blue Wings in his homeland for £2.5m in 2023 and the sold to Genk in Belgium for £3.5m in 2024?
There was bewilderment that a player whose performances were solid but never really spectacular during his short spell in this country was on the verge of moving to a top flight German team for an eight figure fee.
There was also criticism of the Scottish champions – even though an unexpected £4m windfall was in the offing - at a time when they were desperately trying to bring in a top class forward to fill the considerble void which Kyogo Furuhashi had left up front when he departed for Rennes in January.
Typical Celtic! Imagine letting a player leave for next to nothing who gets sold to a top five European league for nearly €30m just a year later! Sack the board! McKay out! Nicholson out! Lawwell out! Desmond out! Hoopy the Huddle Hound Out!
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But an already weird story got stranger still when the transfer collapsed at the very last minute for dubious reasons. It soon emerged that Stuttgart had alleged the medical showed a problem with the player’s knee due to a cruciate ligament injury which he had suffered as a teenager. They asked to take him on loan for the season and Genk refused.
Oh is set to lead the line for the Pro League side in their opening Europa League league phase match against Rangers at Ibrox tomorrow evening. So what exactly happened? The true story is beyond bizarre.
Its roots lie in the uncanny ability which manager Thorsten Fink, the former Basel, Hamburg, Rapid Vienna and Grasshoppers Zurich head coach, has to develop and improve players who can then be sold on for a substantial profit.
“Fink has come in for some criticism recently because of the poor start that Genk have made and the fact that they are 14th in the league,” said Marnik Geukens, a reporter for the Belgian national newspaper Het Belang van Limburg. “People are saying that he is attacking too much, that he is too naïve. They have won two out of eight league games in Belgium this season.
“But he is in no danger. He has made a lot of money for the club. This time last season everyone wanted to sell Tolu Arokodare for €6 or €7m. People said, ‘He’s no good, he has terrible feet’. But Fink said, ‘I’ll make a Premier League striker of him’. He did exactly that. The player joined Wolves for €27m at the start of this month.”
That record-breaking move led directly to the eye-watering offer for Oh from Stuttgart.
The Neckarstadion club’s manager Sebastian Hoeness, the son of Dieter and nephew of Uli, was desperate to increase his attacking options before the window closed and was eager to bolster his squad with Oh.
Contact was made with Genk on the final day of the transfer window. But Fink was understandably reluctant to let his front man depart because Arokodare had just left and he knew that he would struggle to get in an adequate replacement in such a short time frame.
So the Belgian club informed the Asian player’s suitor they would only let their prized asset go if they broke the record transfer fee they had just received and offered €28m. Incredibly, Stuttgart agreed to meet the asking price immediately.
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“It was a huge surprise in Belgium,” said Stan Strubbe, a sports journalist with VoetbalPrimeur.be. “Oh was Genk’s second-choice striker last season. So when an offer of €28m was made it came as a shock.
“Belgian analysts joked that Stuttgart must have misplaced a comma and that the actual figure should’ve been €2.8m instead. Oh is worth more than that, but €28m was still a huge surprise.”
The Stuttgart board members clearly got a bit of a fright when they learned their football department had offered such a huge sum who a little bit of investigative work showed was only valued at around €4m. They frantically tried to renegotiate. When their attempts to knock down the price failed they suddenly discovered an issue with the player’s knee.
“Officially, the deal collapsed due to ‘unsatisfactory medical tests’,” said Strubbe. But there are strong doubts in Genk about that explanation.
“Due to medical confidentiality, the club could only communicate that ‘despite a prior agreement in principle between both clubs, the deal fell through because of a disagreement over the exact transfer conditions’.
“However, an article in German outlet Kicker shed more light on the situation. They pointed to a torn cruciate ligament Oh suffered back in 2017, when he was just 16. He has fully recovered since then and has barely missed a match in recent seasons. He also passed Genk’s medicals last year without issue.
“Stuttgart seemed to use that old injury as leverage to renegotiate. They still wanted him, but only on loan. In reality, it looked like they suddenly realised they were overpaying. But, of course, they’ll never admit that.”
Geukens is confident that Oh, who scored goals against Aberdeen, Hearts, Hibs and St Miren during his stint in Scotland, will put the unusual episode behind him and go from strength to strength now that he is, despite the arrival of Swedish predator Jusef Erabi this summer, Genk’s leading marksman.
“It is a strange story,” he said. “One of the Genk directors is a well-known knee specialist in Belgium and the club are pretty confident there is nothing wrong with him. It is more of an internal issue at Stuttgart than an issue with the player.
“When Oh first came in he scored a lot of goals. But he was always the understudy to Arokodare. Fink kept him happy by telling him he would be first choice when his team mate moved to the Premier League. That is what has now happened.
“But Oh is motivated to score at Ibrox. Fink expects there to be more space than normal against Rangers and when that is the case he always starts Oh. He is very quick and direct. He hasn’t scored much this season, has only netted two goals for Genk, but the team is struggling just now.
“Oh is still young. He can grow and will grow. He is doing well with his national team and South Korea are by no means a small international team. He will be at the World Cup with them next summer. He is a good player. He has got a good shot, is fast, is hard-working. He is a bit of a rough diamond.”
