We all know footballers are very handsomely paid indeed. However, not every footballer ends up being worth the eye-watering amounts of money they’re paid. Many footballers have established reputations and end up attracting very high offers from other clubs; when they end up playing for another team, sometimes they just don’t perform as well as hoped. Things like injuries and loss of confidence can greatly affect a player’s performance - and neither of these is good news for the club who bought them. Here’s a look at some major clubs who forked out huge sums for top players, but didn’t exactly get a good return on their investment, we though you might find this interesting.
Chelsea and Fernando Torres
From summer 2007 to early 2011, Fernando Torres was a star player for Liverpool. Throughout his time with the club, he’d played a total of 145 games and had managed to score a very impressive 81 goals. Based on his scoring prowess, Chelsea decided to put in an offer for him, with a total of £50 million agreed between the two clubs. Things initially went well for Chelsea’s new signing, however things soon went downhill. With Liverpool, Torres had managed an average of 0.55 goals a game - a very commendable feat, for sure. But then he was with Chelsea, he couldn’t maintain his goal scoring ability and ended up averaging 0.25 goals a game. As a result, he ended up getting loaned to Atletico Madrid.
Liverpool and Andy Carroll
Back in January 2011, Liverpool paid a staggering £35 million for Andy Carroll to replace Fernando Torres - at the time this was a record fee for an English player. He’d built up a fairly good reputation for himself as he’d scored no fewer than 11 goals in 19 league games. However, when he came to Liverpool, his performance didn’t quite live up to expectations as his goal scoring went down quite significantly. Across 58 appearances for Liverpool, he only managed to score 11 goals. His disappointing performance was most likely down to an injury he sustained shortly before leaving for Liverpool, as well as his party lifestyle. He was then loaned to West Ham in 2012 and the club ended up signing him on permanently.
Fulham and Steve Marlet
In 2001, Fulham paid the large sum of £11.5 million for French player Steve Marlet - at the time, it was the club’s single largest transfer. Jean Tigana, Fulham’s boss, had been impressed by Marlet’s track record. However, once Marlet started playing for Fulham, it became apparent that he wasn’t as good of an investment as Tigana had hoped. Marlet made a total of 55 appearances across three Premier League campaigns, though he only scored 11 goals. Mohamed Al Fayed, Fulham’s owner, was so distraught over this that he took Tigana to court, claiming Marlet had been purchased for a much higher figure than what he was actually worth - he even referred to Tigana as a ‘crook’ wanting to destroy Fulham.
Barcelona and Dmytro Chygrynskiy
It was in 2009 that Dmytro Chygrynskiy was purchased by Barcelona from Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk for a total of 25 million euros. Everything looked promising: Chygrynskiy, who had quite a good reputation at the time, had signed a five-year contract with the club and it was hoped he would give Barcelona a big boost. However, he failed to live up to expectations and ended up spending less than a year with the club. He made just a dozen appearances before being transferred back to Shaktar Donetsk at a cost of 15 million euros - this meant that Barcelona ended up making a loss of 10 million euros on him.
Real Madrid and Kaka
While at AC Milan, Brazilian midfielder Kaka had earned himself a excellent reputation thanks to having scored 95 goals across 270 competitions. The fact that he was in the peak of his prime at the age of 27 also enhanced his appeal. Real Madrid were keen to snap him up and ended up doing so with a transfer fee of 67 million euros. However, Kaka didn’t live up to expectations and injuries caused him to be sidelined for longer than anyone would have liked. He did manage four years with Real Madrid, though his goal scoring abilities worsened, only scored 29 goals across 120 appearances.
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