Saïd Benrahma initially joined Lyon on loan from West Ham United in February 2024, but the move was made permanent the following summer after the winger impressed with three goals and four assists in his fifteen appearances during the second half of the season. The transfer fee was said to be something in the region of €14 million.
Playing primarily on the left side of the forward line, Benrahma settled in quickly at Lyon and linked up well with Alexandre Lacazette to help the club pull clear of the danger zone at the bottom of the Ligue 1 table and eventually qualify for the Europa League. He had become frustrated by a lack of playing time during his final few months at West Ham under David Moyes, and will be hoping to reignite his career as a regular starter in Pierre Sage’s Lyon outfit.
Growing up in Algeria and France
Benrahma was born in the small city of Aïn Témouchent in the north-west of Algeria, not far from the Mediterranean coast and the bustling port city of Oran. Sadly, Aïn Témouchent was devastated by an earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale in December 1999, when Benrahma was just four years old. Growing up in nearby Sidi Bel Abbès, a larger city once synonymous with the French Foreign Legion, young Saïd took his first steps in youth football with a small club named NRB Bethioua.
The Benrahma family emigrated to France when Saïd was eleven and he soon found himself a football club near his new home in the suburbs of Toulouse. By the age of sixteen, he was on the books of US Colomiers, one of the most prominent amateur clubs in the city. He started to catch the eye of visiting scouts with his performances there, and earned himself a move to Nice shortly before his eighteenth birthday in 2013.
First team opportunities few and far between
Initially playing in the reserve team in the Championnat de France Amateur, Benrahma was a regular goalscorer but he found first team opportunities hard to come by. He mustered a paltry eighteen appearances for the Nice senior team in his first three years at the club before a series of loan moves took him to Angers, Gazélec Ajaccio and Châteauroux, the latter two in Ligue 2. His twelve goals in 34 games for Châteauroux in the 2017-18 season was an impressive haul, but not enough to convince Nice to persevere with him and they sold him to Brentford for €1.7 million.
The twenty-three-year-old Benrahma made 38 appearances in The Championship for The Bees during his first season in west London, plus another seven in cup competitions, scoring eleven times as he quickly became a fan favourite. His numbers were even better the following season as Brentford narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier League, losing 2-1 to Fulham after extra time in the play-off final.
Big-money move across London
By now, Benrahma had become hot property and West Ham moved to sign him on loan in October 2020, before paying around £25 million to make the move permanent the following January. He became an integral component of their first team squad over the following three seasons, playing primarily on the left wing or as an attacking midfielder. Following on from two impressive Premier League campaigns, the pinnacle of his West Ham career came during the 2022-23 season when they lifted the UEFA Europa Conference League title.
Benrahma scored some crucial goals as The Hammers progressed towards the final, including a penalty to give them a 2-1 win against AZ Alkmaar in the first leg of the semi. He repeated the trick in the final in Prague, where his 62nd minute spot kick conversion opened the scoring against Fiorentina in what would be a 2-1 win for the Londoners.
Stop-start career with Les Fennecs
To date, Saïd Benrahma has amassed twenty-eight caps for his native Algeria since making his debut in a friendly match against Senegal at the Stade du 5 Juillet in Algiers in October 2015. He came off the bench with twenty minutes to go and helped inspire a 1-0 victory courtesy of a goal from Yacine Brahimi nine minutes from full time.
Benrahma had to wait almost three and a half years before his next international appearance, and first start, in a 1-0 friendly win over Tunisia in March 2019. Injury forced him to miss that summer’s Africa Cup of Nations, but he’s been a fairly regular squad member since then. He scored his first goal for the national team during a 4-0 win in Djibouti in the qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup. His second and most recent international goal proved to be a the winner in a World Cup 2026 qualifying match against Uganda in Kampala in June 2024.