Brentford technical director Lee Dykes has revealed how Jose Mourinho ruined their plans to sign Yusuf Akçiçek.
Sports Digitale have comments from the Brentford director today in which he admits Mourinho’s intervention stopped their long gestating deal from happening.
Dykes has been in place at Brentford as technical director since 2022 after a previous four-year spell at the club as their head of scouting following a sporting director role at Bury earlier in his career.
It means he’s been heavily involved in transfers at Brentford for some time, forming a part of the team that have proven to be one of the smartest in the business when it comes to transfer business over the last few years.
They’ve proven very adept at planning for the future in particular, often targeting players they can develop for the future and Brentford’s system.
Yusuf Akçiçek was one such player, with the Fenerbahce youngster eyed up for over a year and scouted heavily, with the plan to put him in Brentford’s youth system and then develop him themselves. That plan, though, was ruined by Jose Mourinho’s arrival in Turkey last summer.
“We watched Yusuf Akçiçek for 12 months,” Dykes explained on the matter.
“We first moved to bring him into the Brentford B team. Yusuf wasn’t everyone’s target at the time. Then Mourinho really liked him and wanted to keep him.”
