7 Transfers That DESTROYED Football Clubs

we talk an awful lot about terrible transfers in football whether that be the 60 million euros real madrid paid to sign luka jovic psg's dreadful deal to sign jesse rodriguez on massive wages for 25 million euros or chelsea paying leicester city 35 million pounds to acquire the services of danny drinkwater but whilst they were all terrible transfers which did a certain amount of damage to real madrid psg and chelsea respectively they were hardly catastrophic all three have actually won major trophies since those transfers and remain super clubs who compete at the very highest level even the ludicrous amount of money that barcelona paid for philippe coutinho which contributed to the enormous amount of debt the basa racked up under former president josep martimeo or the crazy wages that manchester united offered alexis sanchez for example which destroyed what little wage structure and squad cohesion they previously had have not yet at least resulted in the total and absolute downfall of barcelona or manchester united don't get me wrong things aren't going great for either of them and they haven't been for a few years but both teams still competed in the champions league this season and will almost certainly be playing in europe again next season no no no instead of the usual focus just on terrible transfers which only tends to take into account cost versus performance and sometimes sell on value i wanted to take a look at some of the most truly damaging transfers in the history of football i am talking about transfers that were so catastrophic that even newcastle united's club records signing of michael owen who was handed a reported 120 000 pound a week deal at st james's park and everton spunking close to 50 million pounds on gylfi sigurdsson didn't even get a looking here are seven of the most ruinous calamitous and downright disastrous transfers of all time seventh seth johnson two leads united there is an urban legend that when leeds united signed seth johnson in 2001 the midfielder was earning just 5 000 pounds a week at derby county and was hoping to receive an offer of around 13 000 pounds a week at leeds united legend has it that leeds united chairman peter ridsdale's first offer to johnson during negotiations was 30 000 pounds a week and when the room fell silent due to johnson and his agent being stunned by the offer that he had made ridsdel voluntarily increased his own offer to 37 000 pounds a week thinking that they had been unimpressed with his initial proposal sadly that urban legend is just that seth johnson has since revealed that he wasn't even personally present for his own contract negotiations meanwhile rude style claims that leeds were paying johnson quote at least 10 000 pounds a week less than most reports claimed nonetheless whilst that story might have been a little bit fanciful it was believable precisely because of the way in which leads united were mismanaged during the early 2000s and even if johnson was only on 20 000 pounds a week with the word only in inverted commas there he was still a hugely damaging piece of transfer business by leeds united following two seasons at derby county where johnson had played almost every minute and won his first cap for england leeds paid seven million pounds to acquire his services with the potential to rise to nine million pounds in addition to handing him a hefty five-year deal leeds had spent beyond their means for a few seasons by that point and when the club missed out on the champions league in 2002 and the extra revenue that comes with it a sharp and painful decline in shoot within two years leeds had been relegated to the championship and two years after that they dropped down into league one and entered administration it would take 16 years before leeds returned to the premier league the signing of seth johnson was by no means the sole cause of leeds united's decline the likes of darren huckabee michael bridges michael duberry robbie keane robbie fowler and nick bambi also proved to be very expensive mistakes by leads in the transfer market meanwhile danny mills's wages were as damaging as just about anything else but johnson arrived for a big fee on very big wages he was almost permanently injured barely playing 50 games in four seasons at the club and he left for absolutely nothing ken bates once claimed that johnson had cost leeds united 230 000 pounds a game which just about sums it up for a club that ended up starting a league one season on minus 15 points after entering administration sixth leandro de miata santos you couldn't go too far wrong if you signed leandro demio on football manager 2012 whatever the price tag as the brazilian wonderkid inevitably turned into one of the best strikers in the world and scored between 40 to 50 goals this season unfortunately for santos they signed demio in 2014 rather than 2012 and in real life not on football manager two absolutely crucial differences that really cost them in the long run there was a reason why demio was so highly rated on fm12 and in real life at the time given the fact that he scored 38 goals in 51 games in the 2011 season which he began as a 21 year old demian was also the top scorer at the 2012 summer olympics in the united kingdom where he scored six goals in only five games on route to the final being nicknamed the new ronaldo and getting heavily linked with moves to the likes of tottenham hotspur and napoli demyaw ended up sticking it out with independiente in brazil until the end of the 2013 season in which he only managed to score 13 goals but santos was still willing to fork out 41 million brazilian real on him which worked out as about 12 million pounds at the time that made demio the second most expensive signing in the history of the campionato brazilero at the time behind only carlos tevez and only two or three players have since arrived in the league for more demiow only played a single season of football for santos in which he scored 11 goals in 44 games and was heavily criticised for his lack of pace being wasteful in front of goal and for being drastically outshone by young teammate gabriel barbossa damiao ended up going out on loan three times before taking santos to court over unpaid image rights in a legal battle the repeatedly thwarted demio's attempts to leave santos and cost the club an absolute fortune in the near decades since santos have been unable to spend even half of what they spent on dem yao on a signing drowning in debt a lot of which is owed to demio's signing and they still haven't won the brazilero since 2004. fifth jack rodwell to sunderland when a team really collapses as sunderland have done in recent years there tends to be a whole heap of terrible signs and that was certainly the case at the stadium of light ricky alvarez it could be argued was an even more disastrous signing than jack rodwell given the fact that sunderland didn't even want to sign him when they were forced to pay 10.5 million euros due to a clause in his loan deal and their failed legal attempts to get out of that deal ended up costing the club more than 20 million pounds meanwhile alvarez didn't play single minutes of football for sunderland after he was signed on a permanent basis jack rodwell did at least play for sunderland after signing for them but not very well and he became just about the unluckiest charm in the entire history of the premier league rodwell was tipped to become a future mainstay in england team when he first broke through at everton and he had already won a couple of caps for england when manchester city came calling and signed him in 2012 having struggled for game time at the etihad after two seasons sunderland signed rodwell for 10 million pounds in what looked to be a really solid signing for a bottom half premier league team rodwell's debut campaign in the northeast was unremarkable if not outright underwhelming at that stage but things got really bad particularly under sam allardyce the following season it took until february 2017 for rodwell to end a run of 1370 days so almost four years without a premier league win during which time rodwell played 39 times so more than a full season's worth of fixtures rodwell was reported to have turned down repeated offers from other clubs due to inferior wages being offered in addition to turning down sunderland's own requests for him to drop down to lesser terms following their relegation rodwell only played two games as sunderland were relegated for a second successive season this time from the championship becoming by far the highest paid league one player of all time on a supposed 70 000 pounds a week rodwell's wages hung like an albatross around sunderland's neck for years as they dropped down through the divisions all whilst rodwell barely played before his contract was finally terminated in june 2018. fourth nabil bentalepta sharka just a few years ago in the 2017-18 season schalke finished as bundesliga runners-up ahead of hoffenheim and borussia dortmund and trailing only bayern munich the following season 2018-19 they made it through to the knockout stage of the champions league and yet in the 2020-21 season that is to say last season shulker finished bottom of the bundesliga miles behind anyone else and were relegated from the top flight of german football for the first time since the 1980s if you want to know more about shulker's quite incredible demise i have made an entire documentary all about it which naturally i would recommend but one factor was certainly the club's three most expensive signings all signed between 2016 and 2018 being wholly unsuccessful sebastian rudy and brielle ambolo both proved to be extremely costly mistakes on shelka's part but nabal bentaleb was in a league of his own when it came to damage caused undeniably talented bentley began his career at tottenham where he played 66 games in three seasons before maurizio pochettino decided to sell it potch tended not to sell players without good reason especially during his early years in north london typically because he wasn't quite convinced that they had the necessary attitude and application to buy into the way in which he wanted tottenham to play following an impressive season on loan at schalke the club paid 19 million euros to sign bentaleb on a permanent basis only for the french-born moroccan international to become a real problem player at the veltin's arena ill disciplined and often at loggerheads with those around him ben celeb was allegedly the highest paid player at the club on close to 100 000 euros a week schalke offloaded those wages when bentaleb went on loan to newcastle for six months in 2020. as the covert 19 pandemic exacerbated his parent club's financial trouble after the midfielder had already been dropped into shulker's reserve team for disciplinary reasons upon his return to german football bentley played only 10 games as shalka were relegated and he did absolutely nothing to aid them in their plate schalke made several reckless financial decisions on route to relegation and amassing 200 million euros worth of debt but signing nabal bentaleb on massive wages for 19 million euros only for him to cause more problems than he fixed before departing on a free has to be right up there third torrey andre floater rangers best known certainly here in england for his three and a half years at chelsea torrey andre flow was a towering norwegian centre forward who combines size strength and technique in 163 appearances for chelsea he scored 50 goals and he was chelsea's top scorer in the 1999-2000 season unlike most players in this seven flo wasn't actually that bad for the club he significantly damaged averaging a goal every other game for rangers where he won two trophies in only two seasons had he cost rangers around three to four million pounds at the turn of the millennium he would have been a perfectly decent signing but he didn't cost three to four million pounds he cost 12 million pounds which quite incredibly still remains the highest fee that a scottish club has ever paid for a player more than 20 years on that was an absolutely enormous fee at the time which seemed unnecessary at the time with rangers chief david murray accused of signing flo to satisfy his own ego with little consideration for the financial repercussions for context celtics signed another big center forward from chelsea that very same season namely chris sutton who cost half as much as flo and enjoyed far more success at celtic park flow departed after just two seasons at ibrox signed by sunderland for roughly half the amount that rangers have paid for him with his staggering supposed 38 000 a week wages at rangers which made him the highest paid player in the league ahead of henrik larsson financially crippling the club it would take until february 2012 for rangers to officially enter administration and then liquidation in october 2012 as a new corporate entity had to be created and rangers were forced to start out again in the fourth tier of scottish football signings like michael ball and tori andrei flow did not immediately rangers as other signings in this seven did but ultimately their impact would be even more severe resulting in the total collapse of the club and endless and tedious debates about whether the post liquidation ranges should be considered a continuation of the pre-liquidation era club second rodrigo to cruzeiro i have included two campionato brazilero signings in this seven but in reality i could quite comfortably have filled all seven spots with calamitous signings made by brazilian clubs in recent years who seem to operate in the transfer market with a nurse suicidal zeal few signings have been as damaging and few declines have been as severe as the rodrigo and cruzeiro with a nickname like rodrigo you should probably be one of the best players in the world like some kind of combination of rodery and ronaldinho and the rodrigo was one of the outstanding players in the brazilian game for a couple of years at corinthians his fine form saw him called up to the brazilian national team with whom he won two caps in 2017. in 2018 rodrigo left corinthians in a move to egyptian outfit pyramids fc who spent an absolute fortune that summer under their short-lived saudi ownership that regime came crashing down so quickly that rodrigo only ever played eight games in egypt before cruzeiro brought him back to brazil in a deal worth 30 million brazilian real or roughly 4.5 million pounds in january 2019 when club legend ronaldo nazario acquired a controlling 90 interest in cruzeiro in december 2021 they still owed that 30 million brazilian real to pyramids fc that is despite the fact that rodrigo himself was already long gone plagued by injuries during his 13 months at the club rodrigo only played five games in the 2019 campionato brazilero campaign as cruzeiro were relegated from the top flight of brazilian football for the first time in the entire history of the club that relegation sent shockwaves right the way through brazilian football but it had been coming for a long time and for a comprehensive breakdown of how one of brazilian football's biggest clubs suffered such a sudden and dramatic decline i have also made a video all about that my output really is outstanding cruzeiro are now looking to get back into the top flight of brazilian football with the help of 70 million us dollars worth of investment following ronaldo's return meanwhile rodrigo plays for barrier where he was relegated for a second successive season during his debut campaign first benito carbonator bradford city one of a number of very talented italians to arrive in the premier league from syria during the second half of the 1990s following a sharp decline in the value of the italian lira benito carbone is best known in england for the three seasons that he spent at sheffield wednesday it was in the summer of 2000 following a single season at aston villa the carbone joined bradford city on a free transfer that might have seemed like a bargain at first glance but perhaps some suspicion ought to have been aroused by the fact that bradford who had only narrowly avoided relegation from the premier league the previous season had reportedly offered carbone better terms than the offers that he received from fiorentina napoli and everton much like flo at rangers carbone wasn't actually a bad player for bradford he scored 10 goals in 42 games but his 40 000 pound a week wages made him almost the highest paid player in the entire division what's more bradford were relegated during carbone's first season at the club finishing bottom of the premier league and he was sent out on loan to derby county and middlesbrough the following season as bradford sought to get their biggest earners off their wage books at the end of their first season back in the second division bradford entered administration the bantams were in 13 million pounds of debt and in serious danger of going entirely out of business carbone still had two years left on his deal at valley parade but with his 40 000 pound a week wages functioning practically as a noose around bradford's neck he agreed to take a 1 million pound payoff which was roughly a quarter of what he was owed in total in order to rip up his contract stating that he didn't want to be known as the man who was responsible for bradford folding carbone's gesture may have saved bradford from extinction but they were still relegated the following season and a year later they found themselves back in administration within the space of just seven seasons bradford went from the premier league to the basement division of english football and they are still stuck there now when bradford sacked manager derrick adams only last month benito carbone who is currently the assistant manager of azerbaijan's national team sent in his application but he was overlooked in favour of former premier league boss marcus that is it for today's video i am going to hold off on doing any honourable mentions because there are a lot of them this video is already quite long and i enjoyed it so if you did too there is always the possibility of a part two thank you all very much as ever for watching i hope you enjoyed today's video as i say hit the like button if that was the case let me know your thoughts down below in the comments and make sure that you're subscribed and have notifications turned on for hitc7s you can also find me on social media on either twitter or instagram via the username at hrtc7s on both should you wish to do so

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 756,324

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, Transfers, Destroyed, Clubs, Signings, Worst, Terrible, Sunderland, Jack Rodwell, Premier League, League One, Champions League, Rangers, Leeds United, Bradford City, Everton

Id: jcGBtVHOerg

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2022