West Ham paid £45m for him then lost millions - now he's playing in Japan | OneFootball

Sebastien Haller's had an interesting career after leaving the Hammers

West Ham United’s record signing did not exactly leave the club with fond memories.

When the Hammers paid up to £45 million for Sebastien Haller in 2019, the French-born striker arrived from Eintracht Frankfurt with a considerable reputation.

He had formed part of a devastating attacking trio alongside Luka Jovic and Ante Rebic in Germany, helping Frankfurt win the DFB-Pokal and making himself one of Europe’s more sought-after forwards.

At West Ham, however, things never quite clicked.

Sebastien Haller transfer: West Ham paid £45m for striker

Haller scored 14 goals in 54 appearances for West Ham, but the numbers never quite reflected the expectations attached to his enormous price tag.

His first season brought seven Premier League goals in 32 appearances, and although there were flashes of the player who had terrorised defences in Germany, consistency proved elusive.

He scored just once in his final 13 league appearances of the 2019/20 campaign, while West Ham spent much of the season fighting at the wrong end of the table.

David Moyes' return to the club did little to change Haller's situation.

By January 2021, just 18 months after breaking West Ham's transfer record to sign him, the club were prepared to cut their losses.

Ajax paid around £20 million for the striker, meaning the Hammers potentially received roughly £25 million less than the maximum fee they had agreed to pay Frankfurt.

On paper, it looked like an expensive miscalculation.

What happened next made it look even stranger.

Haller rediscovered his form at Ajax after West Ham exit

Haller's Ajax career was almost immediately a reminder that there was a very good striker buried underneath the disappointment of his West Ham spell.

He scored 32 goals in 50 Eredivisie appearances, won two league titles and became somewhat of a sensation in the Champions League.

During the 2021/22 group stage, he scored in each of his opening six appearances in the competition, an extraordinary start that put him among Europe's elite goalscorers.

His career then took another dramatic turn.

Borussia Dortmund signed Haller in 2022 for a fee of around £30 million, with the striker viewed as a key replacement for Erling Haaland.

But just weeks after joining the German club, Haller was diagnosed with a malignant testicular tumour, and football suddenly became secondary.

He underwent surgery and chemotherapy before eventually returning to training, making his competitive Dortmund debut against Augsburg in January 2023. Just 13 days later, he scored his first goal for the club against Freiburg - on World Cancer Day.

It was one of those football moments that feels almost too neatly written to be real.

From West Ham disappointment to Japan with Sanfrecce Hiroshima

Haller subsequently returned to Utrecht, where his senior career had begun, before another remarkable chapter with Ivory Coast.

At the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, played in early 2024, he scored the semi-final winner against DR Congo before producing the decisive goal in the final against Nigeria. Ivory Coast won 2-1, completing one of the most unlikely tournament triumphs in recent AFCON history.

For Haller, it was another extraordinary achievement in a career that had already taken him from Utrecht to Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Dortmund - and through a battle that had threatened to derail everything.

Now, at 32, he has taken his career somewhere rather less predictable.

In July 2026, Haller left European football behind to join Sanfrecce Hiroshima in Japan, signing a one-year deal and taking the No.22 shirt in the J1 League.

The £45 million price tag may still be attached to Haller whenever his name is mentioned in east London, but his career since leaving the club has become far too extraordinary to be defined by it.