Football transfers are a wild beast and often they don’t get beyond the enquiry stage
Which Premier League club thought they had secured a deal to sign a young Roy Keane in 1993, only for Alex Ferguson to personally hijack the transfer for Manchester United?
Blackburn Rovers – Keane had verbally accepted a contract on a Friday afternoon but the paperwork wasn’t ready and the two parties agreed to meet again on the Monday to sign it off. But Ferguson intercepted Keane on the Saturday and got the £3.75m deal done there and then.
Which Real Madrid player was supposed to move to Manchester United as part of the failed £29m David de Gea deal in the summer of 2015?
Keylor Navas – Instead, the Costa Rican enjoyed his first season as Los Blancos starter and has won back-to-back Champions League titles in the two years since.
Johan Cruyff heavily flirted with Leicester City when he returned to Europe from the USA in 1981, but which country did he move to in the end?
Spain – Cruyff returned to north east Spain where he’d previously laid down roots with Barcelona and signed for second division side Levante.
Alan Shearer rejected moves to Manchester United twice in the 1990s, but which European giant did he also recently admit to snubbing as well?
Barcelona – Shearer name dropped the Catalans on Twitter, with former Barcelona boss Bobby Robson also previously acknowledging it was a choice between signing the Englishman and Ronaldo at Camp Nou in 1996.
With which Leeds star had Liverpool agreed a £9m deal in the summer of 2002, with the Reds ultimately pulling out after feeling the player wasn’t hungry enough to succeed at Anfield?
Lee Bowyer – The midfielder was all set for the move but Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier had reservations, while personal terms also couldn’t be agreed in the end.
Ex-Liverpool midfielder Dietmar Hamann infamously spent less than 24 hours with which Premier League club before joining Manchester City in 2006?
Bolton Wanderers – Hamann joined The Trotters as a free agent only to have a change of heart almost immediately, joining City instead for a £400,000 compensation fee.
Which of these eventual Real Madrid legends originally ‘signed’ and played at least one friendly for Barcelona in 1953, with the deal collapsing over controversy surrounding the player’s ownership?
Alfredo Di Stefano – With River Plate and Millonarios arguing over who held his registration, Barcelona ultimately backed away from the deal after the Spanish Football Federation refused to sanction it. Real then swooped in to take him for themselves and the rest is history.
A bizarre problem with what resulted in future Premier League flop Aly Cissokho failing a medical at AC Milan ahead of a proposed €15m move in 2009?
His teeth – After announcing a deal in principle, Milan’s stringent medical tests deemed that Cissokho’s dental records indicated he could be vulnerable to possible spinal problems in the future and the deal was scrapped.
Which Premier League club was Robert Lewandowski on the verge of joining for £2.5m in 2010, only to be thwarted by the infamous Icelandic ash cloud?
Blackburn Rovers – The Pole later admitted he was keen to go, but with flights all across northern Europe cancelled he couldn’t get to England to finalise the deal and it fell through. He joined Borussia Dortmund just 5 months later.
Which Premier League side pulled out of a 2014 deal to sign French striker Loic Remy after a medical revealed a potential heart problem?
Liverpool! A puzzled Remy said afterwards, “I came for the medical tests and everything was fine and after that they wanted to be sure everything was fine with my heart. They asked for a specialist for the heart and apparently the guy said they did not 100% agree if I could keep going or had to stop football.”
Sheffield United came close to signing a 17-year-old Diego Maradona in 1978, but why didn’t the proposed deal with Argentinos Juniors fall through?
The Blades board refused to meet the £200,000 asking price – Manager Harry Haslam had scouted Maradona on a trip to Argentina but the valuation was a huge amount of money for an unknown teenager at that time.
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Credit by Soccer Highlights Today
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