The transfer market exists to teach managers humility. Even Jose Mourinho should feel chastened from time to time. Despite his public pronouncements, in his private moments, he might ask himself whether it really was essential to spend £8-million on Tiago, the midfielder offloaded to Lyon on Wednesday. Another of the manager’s recent investments was disposed of earlier in the week.
Jiri Jarosik arrived at Stamford Bridge, for £3-million in January, and has now gone to Birmingham on loan. It is likely that Mourinho, who does not have to justify himself to a penny-pinching proprietor, only intended to use the Czech as a stop-gap. At St Andrews, however, they already regard him as a kingpin.
”At his best I think he is an attacking midfielder who likes to get on the end of crosses,” said Steve Bruce in a visionary interpretation of a player who never scored at all for Chelsea.
Birmingham’s manager could, of course, be proved right because anyone who trades in footballers is dealing in surprises. All too often, however, the shocks have been of a kind that traumatise clubs and invite ridicule. There are five days to go in the present transfer window and all those who are so ready to conduct some feverish business are oddly indifferent to the risks they are running.
Mourinho’s circumstances are unique. He might have spent too much on the £24,4-million Michael Essien and it would have been reassuring if the Lyon manager Gérard Houllier had ranked him in the top 10 instead of saying vaguely, ”There are not 50 players like him in Europe.”
Still, Roman Abramovich cannot be impoverished and so long as the brilliant Mourinho keeps the trophies coming the billionaire owner of the club will not query the bill.
Everyone else is under strain. Managers have usually played the game to a high standard and they certainly study it incessantly, but that does not indemnify them against humiliation. Gianluca Vialli, for one, will never completely live down the signing of Winston Bogarde from Barcelona in 2000. He was not deterred by the Catalan club’s happiness at releasing the defender.
Over four years in London Bogarde collected £40 000 a week and made a meagre 12 appearances at Chelsea. Each outing therefore came at a cost of around £650 000.
Vialli had presumably expected a Dutchman to adapt easily to the Premiership. Fulham, too, dreamed of a trouble-free transition when they paid £11-million for the French striker Steve Marlet and gave him another £6-million in wages during a four-year contract. It is an episode that has marked the club indelibly, covering a period in which showmanship and bullish ambition has given way to tight budgeting.
The pitfalls of acquiring foreign players are particularly obvious when a more drastic switch of cultures is involved. Just as Englishmen have regularly been embarrassments at foreign clubs, so players from other continents or even just southern Europe can be nonplussed when they arrive in these parts.
Sergei Rebrov, the near-equal in fame of Andriy Shevchenko so long as he stayed in Ukraine, quickly turned into an £11-million outcast at Spurs. As managers came and went and his ventures into the hurly-burly of British football grew increasingly infrequent, Rebrov became a permanent outsider on the English scene.
Juan Sebastian Veron, at his best for Manchester United in the Champions League, performed as if inhibited by a distaste for the Premiership. Sir Alex Ferguson did retrieve some of his £28,1-million outlay because Claudio Ranieri thought it was worth £15-million of Chelsea’s cash to see if the sumptuously skilled Argentinian could adjust belatedly.
Talent bewitches managers. Some thrilling outings for the Italy under-21s induced Middlesbrough to make Massimo Maccarone their record signing at £8,1-million. Nowadays the forward is struggling merely to be listed among the substitutes at the club. There do not even seem to be any more loan deals on offer in Serie A. Elsewhere in the north-east the £8,5-million Hugo Viana, who was voted Europe’s young player of the year in 2002, languishes at St James’ Park.
The misadventures in recruiting players have been a theme that runs through the trophyless decades at Newcastle United. Absurdity is never far away. Elena Marcelino, the centre-half secured by Ruud Gullit for £5,8-millon, was generally injured, with scans on the affected areas occasionally declared to be inconclusive. A finger problem kept him out for months, although there was no shortage by then of fans who would happily have given him two fingers.
The subject of failed signings has limitless scope, however, and everyone has their follies. There can be no shrewder operator than Arsène Wenger, but £8-million was misapplied when he snapped up Francis Jeffers. The ”fox in the box” was too readily hunted down by opposing defenders at Highbury. Other deals are inscrutable and it is hard, for instance, to work out precisely why Aston Villa ever embarked on the £6-million deal for Bosko Balaban.
Some episodes are complex. Liverpool rue the fact that they have had to write off most of the £10-million expenditure on El Hadji Diouf, but the Senegal striker’s valuation is in recovery at Bolton.
Despite all the supposed know-how and the many scouting trips, signings are, at best, an educated guess. Managers will be excited this week, but there is plenty to fear as well as they put their reputations and futures on the line. — Â