Petar Šegrt has spoken about his disappointment over a failed move to West Ham United, and it’s something which clearly still irritates him.
Croatia’s Večernji list has published a detailed interview with the 57-year-old after he guided Tajikistan to the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup earlier this year.
He’s currently back in Croatia and that gave the newspaper an opportunity to discuss his career in detail, including the failed move to West Ham.
Šegrt had a chance to join the Hammers when Avram Granat took charge of the London club in the summer of 2010. He was in contention to become Grant’s assistant and even made a trip to the English capital to secure the move.
However, it didn’t go through because of agents involved in the operation, and Željko Petrović ended up becoming the former Chelsea manager’s assistant at West Ham.
When asked about the failed West Ham move, he said: “Yes, and that was practically all agreed with the then manager Avram Grant, I was already in London preparing training sessions. I would be the coach in charge of work on the field, and Grant would lead the team and perform other tasks within the manager’s competence.
”Why did it fail? Because the agents who represented me in that business wanted to raise my salary by £300k overnight, which the club did not agree to. So, I was left without that engagement, and West Ham hired Željko Petrović instead of me.”
Grant was in charge of West Ham during the 2010/11 season, and if not for his greedy agents, Šegrt would have also had a spell at the English club.
