Nottingham Forest sign Ivory Coast defender Ousmane Diomande for £34m

Nottingham Forest were set to pay €40m, about £34m, for Sporting CP defender Ousmane Diomande, a 22-year-old Ivory Coast international and one of Oliver Glasner’s key targets. The move would hand Forest a highly rated young centre-back and add another expensive piece to a squad rebuild shaped around immediate defensive improvement.

The deal had moved in stages before reaching that point. Forest first made an enquiry without submitting an official bid, then advanced the talks until a verbal agreement was reached and paperwork began to be drafted. Diomande was expected to travel to the United Kingdom for a medical and sign a five-year contract, while Sporting held firm on its €40m asking price throughout the negotiations.

Diomande’s rise helps explain why Forest were willing to go that far. He had already built a reputation in Europe as one of the more promising centre-back prospects, and he was part of the Ivory Coast side that reached the World Cup knockout stages for the first time. At 22, he offers the kind of age profile that gives a buying club both immediate use and long-term resale potential, which matters when a transfer fee reaches the top end of the market for a defender.

The path to agreement was not straightforward. Some transfer chatter suggested the move had briefly stalled or even collapsed before momentum returned, but later updates said negotiations had advanced again and a final deal was close. That sequence underlines both Sporting’s hard line on price and Forest’s determination to land a player they viewed as central to Glasner’s plans.

For Nottingham Forest, the reported fee is a statement of ambition as much as a gamble. Diomande is not being brought in as a development project alone; the expectation is that he can strengthen the back line quickly in a league where mistakes are punished and transfer fees are visible from the first whistle. If the paperwork is completed as expected, Forest will have committed a significant sum to a defender whose reputation rests on potential, timing and a rapid ascent through European football.