West Ham surely still ruing £28.4m disaster over “once in a generation” superstar - opinion

West Ham’s dream of Champions League football could finally be realised this season, with the club just six points behind fourth-placed Arsenal in the Premier League and about to head into a Europa League quarter-final tie with Lyon after the international break.

The Hammers faithful have all too rarely seen their club break into the top six, having breached it just once since the 1998/99 season, when they finished fifth with a team containing the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Paolo Di Canio.

However, their fortunes over the last ten years could have been massively different had they followed up on their interest 12 years ago in one of the world’s best talents when he was just 18.

Arguably West Ham’s biggest transfer disaster in modern times, the club failed to cough up £28.4m to trigger Neymar’s release clause at Santos in 2010, three years before he signed for Barcelona for a whopping £79.2m and became the hottest prospect in Europe.

According to the Daily Mail, the Irons made a £16m offer to Santos for the Brazilian ace, but that was rebuffed as the Brazilian club wanted the extra £12.4m to match the clause in his contract, as they felt they could have received more down the line – and they were right.

Ranking joint-16th in the list of all-time Champions League top scorers with 41, he has also scored 92 times in 137 appearances for current club Paris Saint-Germain, plus 105 times for Barcelona, setting up a further 133 goals in total across both clubs since moving to Europe back in 2013.

Admittedly the 30-year-old has had an uncharacteristically subpar season by his standards, scoring just six goals in 25 appearances for club and country, while averaging a 7.13 match rating in Ligue 1, compared to 7.53