Ranking the 10 biggest transfer hijackings of all time: Eze, Gascoigne, Keane…
Arsenal‘s last-ditch signing of Eberechi Eze from under Tottenham’s noses sent social media into meltdown – but where does it rank in football’s greatest hijackings?
It appeared for all the world that their north London rivals Tottenham had everything in place to sign Eze before Arsenal swooped in.
Both clubs have been involved in a fair few hijackings, alongside Chelsea, Manchester United and Real Madrid. Here is the complete top 10.
10. Emmanuel Petit to Arsenal
Fabrizio Romano was barely out of a Neopolitan nursery when Emmanuel Petit joined Arsenal in the summer of 1997. The transfer window didn’t even exist yet.
The internet was still so embryonic that almost all football obsessives got their transfer news from the back pages, or Ceefax at a push.
Forget rolling news, or on-the-hour updates going from ‘concrete talks’ to ‘here we go confirmed’.
So the wider public were considerably more in the dark when it came to Petit’s move to North London, but the behind-the-scenes machinations were no less dramatic – albeit a fair bit more quaint.
“Tottenham put the contract on the table for me, I needed a couple of days to think about it but they didn’t expect what happened after that,” Petit reminisced in a 2018 interview with the Daily Mirror.
“When the cab came, he took me straight to Arsene Wenger’s house, it was the first time I met David Dein and Tottenham paid for the cab to help me sign for Arsenal. It’s part of the legend now.”
The French midfielder was immediately a key cog for Wenger’s Gunners as they became a serious, title-winning force. Daniel Levy can only hope history won’t repeat itself.
9. David Silva to Real Sociedad
El Mago weighed up his options after his legendary ten-year spell at Manchester City came to an end in 2020.
Eventually, he looked all set to join Lazio – only to ignore their calls with a medical scheduled, having had a last-minute change of heart to return to Spain and sign for Real Sociedad instead.
“I learned about David Silva’s transfer to Real Sociedad,” Lazio sporting director Igli Tare responded in a statement on the club’s official website.
“I have great respect for the player, but not for the man.”
Ouch.
8. Mykhailo Mudryk to Chelsea
It feels like a long time ago now that Mudryk was getting compared to Neymar and rated as one of the most exciting young wingers in Europe.
The Ukrainian’s name was an almost daily fixture of the transfer gossip columns for the first half of the 2022-23 campaign.
He made his love for Arsenal abundantly clear on social media and everything appeared set for the Gunners to land his signature in the winter window – until Chelsea suddenly emerged with a better offer.
“Overall, it was the same [offer]. Not approximately the same — it was the same figure. The fixed part, variable part, bonuses.
“But if you look inside the fixed part and bonuses, it was completely different,” Shakhtar CEO Sergei Palkin told The Athletic.
“Different time (schedule) of the payments, different kinds of bonuses. Yes, we can talk about bonuses, but these bonuses should be somehow achievable and realistic, let’s say.
“Therefore, in this case, Chelsea was much more serious and fair in some points.”
Arsenal might consider that one a bullet dodged, given how things have gone for Mudryk at Stamford Bridge.
7. John Obi Mikel to Chelsea
Chelsea love a good gazumping, don’t they?
This one set the benchmark for all the Blues’ other big-name hijackings in the years to come.
Mikel actually signed a contract with Manchester United as a teenager, only for Chelsea to stick their oar in.
The saga could’ve spilt over into a messy legal battle, but Sir Alex Ferguson reneged after accepting Mikel’s choice.
“When they saw that [I’d signed for United] they refused to let it go and said they’d fight,” recalled Mikel on TNT Sports’ What I Wore.
“FIFA couldn’t sort it out and get either team to back off, the English FA got involved and then I had a one-to-one meeting with Fergie.
“He said he wanted a meeting with me, alone without anybody for 30 minutes, and that he would be able to convince me to come to Manchester United.
“So I had the meeting, but he couldn’t convince me and that’s how it was settled.”
6. Moises Caicedo to Chelsea
In purely financial terms, this is the biggest.
Liverpool tabled a record British transfer bid in excess of £100million to sign the Ecuadorian midfielder back in 2023.
If anything, that could’ve been considered a hijacking as Chelsea had been ahead of the Reds in negotiations.
Liverpool’s action raised the stakes and forced their hand, matching the bid and getting a deal done. The choice was ultimately up to Caicedo.
“I was talking with Chelsea for a long time. It was impossible to say no to Chelsea, because they were with me supporting me,” Caicedo told Sky Sports.
“In the summer I suffered a lot because it was complicated to leave Brighton.
“They were with me, and in the last moment Liverpool called me but it was [too] late because I wanted to play for Chelsea. It was tough to say no to Chelsea.”
QUIZ: Can you name the 30 most expensive transfers between Premier League clubs?
5. Roy Keane to Manchester United
We’ll leave Keane himself to tell this story. It’s a doozy.
“I was lucky to have one or two options. I did shake hands and I said: ‘Listen, I’ll come.’ [to Blackburn] I think the contract was basically agreed,” Keane recalled in an Overlap Live appearance alongside Sir Kenny Dalglish.
“I went back to Ireland and got a phone call from United. The mistake I made was saying I would sign. Obviously I have no regrets about signing for United.
“Everyone thinks Kenny is a really nice guy. He phoned me and obviously word got out that I wasn’t going to Blackburn.
“He said: ‘Listen, I’m not happy. You shook hands. I said ‘sorry Kenny and blah, blah, blah. Listen I’m going on my holiday tomorrow’. I was going to Ayia Napa.
“I swear he said: ‘I’m going to find you over there.’ Honestly, for the next two weeks, I’m in Ayia Napa and every bar I’m in I’m looking over my shoulder. I’m thinking he’s going to come in and get me!”
4. Paul Gascoigne to Tottenham
Chin up, Spurs fans. You’ve been on the right side of a transfer hijack at least once. And that one turned out pretty gloriously.
Everybody knows the story by now. One of football’s most well-worn yarns.
To summarise: Manchester United thought they’d signed the mercurial young Gazza from Newcastle United, only for Tottenham to get in ahead by offering to buy his parents a house… as well as a sunbed for his sister.
“She should have got a spray tan and I would have a few more medals,” Gascoigne later joked.
“Off I go, and I’m lying by the pool when there is a Tannoy for me to take a call,” explained Ferguson in an interview with late journalist David Frost.
“It was [chairman Martin Edwards] telling me Tottenham had [signed him instead] by buying Paul’s mum and dad a house in the north east.”
You can only imagine the shade of red he went after receiving that call. Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast would have nothing on Fergie.
3. Willian to Chelsea
People forget now that Liverpool were widely seen as the frontrunners for the Brazilian winger’s signature after dodgy Russian outfit Anzhi Makhachkala hit the skids.
But it was Tottenham who got their act together enough to get a deal done in the closing days of the summer 2013 window.
It was widely reported that the move to White Hart Lane was practically a formality, only for Chelsea to suddenly appear on the scene.
Imagine the football boardroom of a WWE wrestler’s entrance. Bah Gawd, that’s Roman Abramovich’s music.
Still, an important lesson there for Spurs and Daniel Levy. Surely they’d never make the same mistake aga… Oh.
2. Alfredo Di Stefano to Real Madrid
To be fair, given the magnitude of this one, there’s a strong argument that’ll it’ll forever be the mother of all transfer hijackings.
One of the absolute greatest players of all time. Arguably the two biggest clubs in world football in Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Looking set for Catalonia before ending up in the Spanish capital, becoming almost singlehandedly responsible for building Madrid’s unparalleled mythos for a century to come.
Much as Eze’s U-Turn sent social media into meltdown, he can’t quite compete with that, can he?
We’re knocking this one down a place, though, because it wasn’t a clean hijacking. In the parlance of tabloid transfer talk, it was far from a simple ‘swoop’.
More like an awkward mugging that leaves both parties fighting their corner in court.
The story itself is far too complicated to summarise here, but needless to say it was a tangled web of ill-feeling, conspiracy theories involving General Franco and contradicting arguments.
It was even initially agreed that Di Stefano would represent both sides of the El Clasico divide on a rolling, rotational basis before Madrid eventually got their way outright.
The rest is history.
1. Eberechi Eze to Arsenal
We have a new number one. An absolute all-timer of a transfer hijacking.
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