Douglas Owusu's summer has been a lesson in how fast a career can swing on the findings of a doctor's scan. Sport5 lays out the story behind the collapse of what would have been a club-record move for the young Ghanaian winger — and how that failure ultimately rerouted him to Bloomfield Stadium.
Owusu, 20, arrived at Red Star Belgrade from Radnik Surdulica in January for a reported €2.2 million, quickly building a reputation as one of the most sought-after teenage wingers in the Balkans. Within months, Czech side Viktoria Plzeň had agreed what was reported as their most expensive transfer ever — a fee in the region of €3.3 million plus roughly €1 million in performance add-ons, according to Ghanaian outlet GhanaSoccernet, which broke the terms of the deal.
The move never got that far. Owusu travelled for his medical in the Czech Republic, and according to Czech outlet Deník Sport — cited by ONE — the examination flagged a knee problem that had not been fully documented beforehand. Plzeň walked away, and Serbian outlet Meridian Sport confirmed soon after that the transfer had 'definitively collapsed,' with Red Star ruling out even a loan elsewhere.
The fallout left Owusu in limbo at Marakana. Sport5 reports he trained under coach Dejan Stanković and appeared in a pre-season friendly against Zenit St Petersburg without getting on the pitch, but he did not feature in a single registered league or Champions League qualifying match for Red Star for the rest of the season.
That period without game time, paired with the lingering knee question mark, shaped how Israeli clubs approached him this summer. According to ONE, both Tel Aviv rivals scouted the same player: Maccabi Tel Aviv moved first but, wary after the Plzeň scare, would only discuss a loan rather than a permanent deal. Hapoel Tel Aviv took the opposite approach and offered to pay Red Star Belgrade an outright fee.
That willingness to buy rather than borrow appears to have been decisive. Red Star's leadership opted for the certainty of a fee from Hapoel over Maccabi's loan proposal, according to ONE's reporting on the chase between the two clubs.
Ynet, breaking the completed transfer, reported the deal is worth around €2.5 million on a four-year contract — making Owusu the most expensive signing in Hapoel Tel Aviv's history. Club CEO Gai Primor travelled to Belgrade to finalise the details before the move was announced.
At Red Star, Owusu made 12 league appearances in the second half of last season and scored twice, statistics that underline why both Tel Aviv clubs kept faith in him despite the medical red flag that sank the Plzeň deal. Hapoel's medical team will now have run its own examination before completing the signing, a step that carries extra weight given what happened in the Czech Republic.
For Hapoel, the gamble is as much financial as physical: a club-record fee for a winger who spent months unable to convince Red Star to even risk a loan spell elsewhere. For Owusu, it is a chance to finally get consistent football again after a transfer saga that started with a record fee for Plzeň and nearly ended his season on the sidelines.
