Football's worst career moves
Football transfers are a delicate balancing act at the best of times
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Wednesday, 01, Jul 2009 05:28
Cristiano Ronaldo has become the world's most expensive footballer after completing his move to Real Madrid.
Could it make or break his career at the highest level?
inthenews.co.uk's Alistair Potter looks at a couple of other big-name signings of recent years that didn't quite work out.
Michael Owen to Newcastle United
When he it was announced he would be leaving Real Madrid in 2005, England international striker Owen - who at that time was a virtual certainty to break Bobby Charlton's scoring record for his country - must have been expecting offers from all over the place.
However, when none of the big clubs back home seemed to show an interest - despite an excellent scoring record off the bench in Spain - he was forced to set his sights a little lower.
At £17 million, Owen seemed a little overpriced but Newcastle United seem incapable of doing anything that is not sensational in some way. Still, they were getting one of England's biggest names who would sell shirts galore and score plenty of goals. Right?
Nope.
Owen's first season was disrupted by injuries before he got crocked at the 2006 World Cup when he twisted his knee against Sweden. After such a serious setback he was never the same again.
Now, four years on, he has let his contract run down at St James' Park and will depart on a free - leaving many Geordies questioning whether his heart was ever in it. He's also about sixth or seventh on England manager Fabio Capello's list of strikers and looks set for a move to one of the Premier League's lesser lights this summer (Hull and Stoke are a far cry from Madrid and Liverpool, aren't they?).
He turns 30 in December and he's not getting any younger - so it's hardly a good time to rebuild a floundering career.
David Bentley to Tottenham Hotspur
When he arrived at White Hart Lane from Blackburn Rovers, David Bentley's prospective transfer had been discussed in depth in the tabloids for months.
Bentley, despite a few questions over his temperament from a few dodgy days at Arsenal, was English football's "great white hope" - the winger that would be the natural successor to David Beckham on the right-hand side.
However, these days he is considered to be more of a big white elephant - having cost several million pounds before being ostracised from the first-team by Harry Redknapp.
No one is entirely sure what this summer holds for Bentley, but his stock has managed to fall a remarkable distance in the space of just 12 months.
Winston Bogarde to Chelsea
Does anyone know quite what happened to arguably one of the greatest Dutch defenders of a generation once he moved to Stamford Bridge?
Bogarde was a much-sought-after commodity when the Blues splashed out on him in 2000 but evidently then-manager Gianluca Vialli did not agree and was reluctant to play him.
Vialli's successor Claudio Ranieri agreed with his fellow Italian's assessment and was keen to get shot of the Dutchman but it appeared few were willing to match Chelsea's monster contract offer and Bogarde decided to see out his four-year deal.
After only 11 appearances in four seasons in west London, Bogarde - who barely even appeared for the reserves let alone the first XI - left at the age of 33 and didn't sign for another professional club.
Juan Sebastien Veron to Manchester United
When he joined the Red Devils in 2001, Veron was rated as one of the world's greatest midfield players.
Sir Alex Ferguson agreed - spending more than £28 million on him (then a world record transfer fee) and handing him a five-year contract.
However, things never really got going for the man who had been a star in an Argentina shirt for the last few years - and had won the Coppa Italia with both Parma and Lazio and the Serie A title with the Rome giants in 2000.
He came under increasing pressure after a strong of poor performances and although he enjoyed the backing of his manager, the strength of public opinion won out and Veron was shipped on at what is believed to have been a 50 per cent loss.
His subsequent move to Chelsea rekindled his career for all of 90 minutes (he scored on his professional debut there in 2003) but again he fell out of favour.
Veron has since returned to his native Argentina.
Andriy Shevchenko to Chelsea
This one was always going to come up, wasn't it?
It's difficult to talk about transfer flops without referring to the biggest and most famous in English football in recent memory - and that man was Andriy Shevchenko.
Coveted for years by Chelsea's Russian billionaire owner Roman Abramovich, the Shevchenko move is thought to have been engineered by the oligarch rather than then-manager Jose Mourinho.
The Portuguese tactician believed Shevchenko wouldn't fit into his 4-5-1 formation, with Didier Drogba doing a decent job as the Blues' lone striker.
But rumour has it that Mourinho's hand was forced when Abramovich threatened to close his not insubstantial purse strings if his wish to have the Ukrainian master in his lineup was not realised.
The result? The most expensive league-goals-to-price-tag ratio of any player in English football history (his nine goals in 47 Premier League appearances for the Blues cost, on average, almost £3.5 million each).
What made the brief two-season switch to Stamford Bridge even more ridiculous was that when he left AC Milan for England he was adored as a hero by the Rossoneri.
He since returned for a one-year loan spell but failed to find the net once in Serie A and the player's pleas for a permanent return fell on deaf ears.
Scott Parker / Shaun Wright-Phillips / Steve Sidwell to Chelsea
Judging by this feature, Chelsea seem to have signed quite a few duds in recent seasons. Is that an unfair assessment? Frankly, no.
These three are grouped together into one because their circumstances mirror each others' quite well.
When he moved to Chelsea, Steve Sidwell had just helped unfancied Reading survive in the Premier League - and he had done his job as the midfield dynamo so well that the Royals almost snatched an unlikely place in Europe.
His reward was what looked like a pretty surprising move to the FA Cup winners and Premier League runners-up in July 2007 - made all the more annoying for Reading fans by the fact that it was on a free.
The problem was that Sidwell hardly had the stature to survive in a squad that featured, in central midfield, the likes of Claude Makelele, Michael Ballack, Frank Lampard and Michael Essien to name but four.
Scott Parker had a similar problem when he arrived at the club from Charlton Athletic in January 2004 - facing competition for places that left him no real option but to sit on the bench.
The move was particularly poor as a career choice because of accusations from Addicks manager Alan Cubishley that he had been rather underhand in his demands to leave.
Parker's subsequent move away from Chelsea after a pretty unhappy 18 months hardly said a great deal for his judgement either - a pretty sketchy Newcastle United side was to be his destination.
And finally, Shaun Wright-Phillips made what was seen by many pundits and fans alike at the time as possibly the most foolish transfer of recent years.
Adored by City fans - especially after his blockbuster goal against bitter rivals Manchester United in a famous 4-1 win in March 2004 - Wright-Phillips took some pretty poor advice when he signed on the dotted line with Mourinho's Blues.
Almost everyone knew he wasn't going to get any playing time - everyone, that is, apart from little Shaun.
Three seasons of bench-warming and falling off the radar in international football gradually hinted that Stamford Bridge wasn't the place for him. So, finally, he turned tail and backed down from his original decision - returning to Eastlands with his tail between his legs.
Only now, after returning to City under a new manager and remembering what a football pitch feels like, is Wright-Phillips working his way back into the England fold.
He's lucky his Chelsea hiatus only cost him three years.
And the manager...
Luis Felipe Scolari to Chelsea
How do you go from being a World Cup winner, a managerial legend in Portugal and being offered - and turning down - one of the world's top coaching jobs to the scrap heap in the space of 12 months? Join Chelsea.
Scolari led his native Brazil to World Cup glory in 2002 and took a talented but inconsistent Portugal side to the last-four of the same tournament four years' later. Having knocked out Sven Goran Eriksson's England in the quarter-finals, Scolari was approached to be the Swede's successor but rejected the chance to manage here internationally before being tempted by the riches of west London.
The dream didn't last long though - he spent some cash and introduced a more expansive style of football to sever ties with the previous regimes of Avram Grant and Jose Mourinho. But his attempts to instigate too much change in too little time led to unrest and the Blues took a nosedive around Christmas before he quit in the new year.
The fact that Guus Hiddink then led Chelsea to an FA Cup title - and what should have been a second consecutive Champions League appearance - just rubbed salt in the wounds. Scolari was left to complain bitterly to the press that he was undermined by some of the players. Hmmm...
Alistair Potter