The 11 biggest swap deals in football history: Eto’o & Ibra, Simeone & Vieri…
If you’re a regular reader of transfer gossip columns, you’ll no doubt be familiar with fantastical tabloid reports about how two European giants are going to trade two superstar footballers in a financially complicated swap deal.
We’ve been around the block enough times to recognise that swap deals rarely come to fruition, and that we’re unlikely to see Romelu Lukaku and Victor Osimhen move between Chelsea and Napoli in the coming weeks. Never say never, though.
Indeed, the swap deal is something that used to happen with a fair degree of regularity – often involving some world-class players at the biggest clubs. Here are 11 of the biggest swap deals in football history.
11. Francesco Coco & Clarence Seedorf
It wouldn’t feel right to mention Seedorf without the apparently compulsory mention for his four European Cups with three different clubs.
The midfielder had two of the four in the bag by the time of his oft-forgotten trophyless mid-career stint at Inter Milan. In 2002, the Nerazzurri made the quite frankly baffling decision to trade the Dutchman with for Italian left-wingback Francesco Coco (who? – exactly).
Seedorf went on to win another two Champions Leagues with AC Milan, while Coco didn’t do a great deal of anything at Inter and hung up his boots at the age of 30.
If you’ve looking for a deeper dive on Coco’s strange career, we’ve got you covered.
10. Diego Simeone & Christian Vieri
Serie A is going to be something of a common theme here.
Italian clubs love a perplexing swap deal, and they don’t come much bigger than two Serie A cult heroes – Diego Simeone and Christian Vieri – moving in opposite directions between Lazio and Inter in the summer of 1999.
It wasn’t a direct swap, though. Inter also paid a world-record £28million fee, and it meant spending on Vieri reached a mammoth £57million over the past two years, the Italian striker accounting for three of the world’s 10 most expensive transfers at the time.
It was at Inter whereby Bob0 Vieri enjoyed by far the most fruitful and settled spell of his well-travelled career.
He scored 103 Serie A goals in just 143 appearances for the Nerazzuri, although somehow only won a solitary Coppa Italia across six seasons there. Simeone, meanwhile, helped Lazio to an unexpected Scudetto in 1999-00.
9. Diego Milito & Thiago Motta & Leonardo Bonucci and four others
Everyone remembers how Samuel Eto’o’s move from Barcelona proved vital in Jose Mourinho building a squad at Inter capable of going for the treble in 2009-10. More on that later.
Lesser remembered is the ludicrously convoluted move that took just-as-key men Milito and Motta from Genoa.
A young and relatively unknown Leonardo Bonucci was sent packing in the other direction alongside Robert Acquafresca, Francesco Bolzoni and Riccardo Meggiorini – while the co-ownership registration rights of forgotten Montenegrin striker Ivan Fatic were also included.
We’d try to explain the full ins and outs of this one but we’re not accountants. Needless to say, Inter did better out of the deal as they went on to win the Coppa Italia, Serie A title and Champions League.
Genoa didn’t even get to enjoy Bonucci, who was immediately sold on to Bari without making a single appearance for the club.
8. Julio Baptista & Jose Antonio Reyes
The late, great Reyes returned to Spain after a couple of memorable seasons at Arsenal in 2006. This was the lesser-spotted loan swap deal.
Reyes spent one season at Real Madrid, in which he notched seven goals and four assists and won the La Liga title.
In north London, Julio Baptista notched 10 goals (four of them in one game against Liverpool) and four assists for the Gunners but failed to get his hands on any silverware.
The two players returned to the Spanish capital the following summer, with Baptista rejoining his parent club and Reyes joining Los Blancos’ city rivals Atletico.
7. Ashley Cole & William Gallas
It messes a bit with our concept of time that Cole won more Premier League titles with Arsenal than he did with Chelsea.
Surprisingly enough, England’s long-serving left-back only actually won one league title during his eight years at Stamford Bridge.
But he also completed the set by winning the Champions League, the Europa League, the League Cup and no fewer than four FA Cups… adding to the three he lifted with the Gunners.
Needless to say, Gallas didn’t achieve anything like that at the Emirates, with his great legacy there sitting down in a strop during a white-hot title race.
At least Arsenal also received a fee of… £5million. Oof.
READ: 14 ridiculous transfers that nearly happened: Maradona to Sheff Utd, Zlatan to QPR…
6. Ricardo Quaresma & Deco
A proper mid-noughties player swap, this one. Razorlight’s Golden Touch was probably blasting out of a nearby speaker as you read about this one in an actual newspaper, or the slow-loading ethernet pages of a desktop PC.
After flopping at Barcelona – who reportedly opted to sign him instead of Cristiano Ronaldo, oops – Quaresma returned to Portugal to sign for reigning European champions Porto.
Deco, fresh from his starring role in Mourinho’s memorable side, moved in the opposite direction – and proved similarly influential for La Blaugrana as they won back-to-back La Liga titles and the Champions League in 2006.
Porto received £13million as well as Quaresma, which sounds about right.
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5. Alexis Sanchez & Henrikh Mkhitaryan
We all remember that piano unveiling video and Sanchez going from one of the Premier League’s most dangerous attackers to a shadow of himself as he moved from Arsenal to Manchester United.
It’s easier to forget Mkhitaryan moving in the opposite direction, the Armenian winger giving us a second successive entirely meh Premier League stint of an otherwise more than decent career.
Reports from the time suggested that Sanchez cost United £35million while Mkhitaryan cost the Gunners a similar amount. One of those rare bits of business that ultimately leaves all parties feeling dissatisfied.
4. Luis Garcia & Fernando Torres
As a cult hero Luis Garcia left Liverpool for Atletico Madrid, in came a proper bonafide Kop idol in Fernando Torres.
It was reported that the Reds paid Atleti an additional £21.5million, plus Garcia, for their prized academy graduate.
Torres unthinkably failed to lift any silverware during his time on Merseyside, but he was instantly and undoubtedly one of the most lethal strikers in the country – it was his goals that helped elevate Rafael Benitez’s side to genuine title contenders in 2008-09.
3. David Luiz & Nemanja Matic
It’s a bit of a head-scratcher that two players that would play alongside one another at Stamford Bridge, both in their second stints there, once moved in opposite directions.
But back when Chelsea originally signed Luiz from Benfica, back in 2011, they used young fringe player Matic as a makeweight in the deal.
The Brazilian defender helped the Blues win the Champions League during his debut season – as well as two Europa Leagues, two FA Cups and one Premier League title across his two spells – while Matic developed his game at the Estadio da Luz, eventually rejoining Chelsea in 2014.
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2. Miralem Pjanic & Arthur
This one’s big in the sense of the eye-watering fees involved. Arthur is technically Barcelona’s second-most expensive departure, sold to Juventus for an official fee of €80million, while Pjanic remains in their top 10 record buys at a fee of €60million.
Pjanic is now a free agent, following two years with UAE outfit Sharjah. Arthur is still at Juventus, but is not part of their plans after loans to Liverpool and Fiorentina.
That tells you a thing or two about their career trajectories following that 2020 swap deal, and how overinflated those fees were at the time.
Just daft. But an important precursor to this baffling new era of “pure profit” and PSR workaround transfers. Bring back Jim White and his yellow tie, you wouldn’t have had any of this nonsense in his day.
1. Zlatan Ibrahimovic & Samuel Eto’o
The big one. We’d be amazed if we ever see two players of such magnitude move in opposite directions again.
Eto’o went on to win a second successive treble at Inter, which is a truly ridiculous achievement if you give it a second’s thought.
Ibrahimovic won a La Liga title and scored a not-terrible 22 goals in 46 appearances during his one year at Camp Nou, but he famously never saw eye-to-eye with Pep Guardiola and returned to Serie A after just one year… signing, originally on loan, for Inter’s rivals AC Milan.
Inter definitely won this one. And that’s before you get to the added fee, which is disputed in different quarters but believed to be as high as €69.5 million. Wooooof.