5 players whose dream Real Madrid transfers quickly turned into a nightmare
As we’ve seen with this summer’s flashy unveilings of Kylian Mbappe and Endrick, signing for Real Madrid is considered by many to be football’s equivalent to reaching Everest’s summit.
Widely regarded as the biggest football club in the world, joining the Spanish giants is a dream come true. And iconic players, from Zinedine Zidane to Cristiano Ronaldo to Vinicius Junior, have lived that dream at the Bernabeu.
But not every dream signing delivers. We’ve taken a closer look at five footballers whose dream transfer to Real Madrid can be considered a nightmare.
Nicolas Anelka
“After the press conference, I went to the changing room. I got there first, sat down, but players kept coming up to me and saying: ‘That’s my spot’. I would say: ‘Oh, sorry. Can I sit here?’ and then another player would come up and say: ‘That’s my spot’,” Anelka reminisced in 2020 Netflix documentary Anelka: Misunderstood.
“It happened maybe 20 times. I just thought: ‘What am I doing here? This is going to be hostile’. What I experienced that day was just the beginning of the nightmare.”
The French forward signed for a then-mammoth £22million fee after bursting onto the scene as an immensely talented teenager at Arsenal. But that immensely competitive dressing room environment did not prove conducive to getting the best out of the young confidence player, who failed to score in his first five months.
“There was so much pressure. I was in the press every day. On the pitch, things weren’t great. I couldn’t have a private life. I couldn’t do anything,” he added.
“You’re 20, you can’t walk down the street. Everything you do gets talked about, everything you buy is in the newspapers the next day.”
He ended up scoring just two league goals and promptly returned to France, signing for PSG in the summer of 2000.
Still, his one and only season at the Bernabeu concluded with him starting up top alongside Fernando Morientes as Los Blancos demolished Valencia 3-0 in the Champions League final. As silver linings go, that’s not a bad one.
Jonathan Woodgate
Michael Owen seemed weirdly not all that arsed about signing for Real Madrid, but most of their other English stars – Steve McManaman, David Beckham, Jude Bellingham – would tell you it represented the absolute pinnacle of their careers.
Woodgate would say the same. Unfortunately, it didn’t go to plan. He suffered horrendously with injuries, didn’t make his debut for 17 months, and when it eventually arrived it was infamously disastrous – in which he scored an own goal and was subsequently sent off. Things did get better from there, but not by much.
“Failure is the one word I’d use about Madrid,” Woodgate recalled on the Original Penguin X Campaign Against Living Miserably Under The Surface podcast.
“When you sign for the biggest team in the world, you want to go there and make a difference, but I didn’t.
“I didn’t win any trophies there and I hardly played, so that’s why I’d put it down as a failure. When I look back on my career, that gets to me. More than anything. Because you’re on the biggest stage. And my body let me down.”
READ: Remembering Jonathan Woodgate’s calamitous Real Madrid debut
Elvir Baljic
“It doesn’t hurt me to see media listing me among Real’s biggest flops; I don’t see myself that way,” former Bosnia and Herzegovina said of his time at Real Madrid.
That’s a healthy attitude that’s to be commended, albeit unlikely to be shared by many from the Madrid press or fanbase.
The forward had caught the eye of former Blancos boss John Toshack during his time in the Turkish Super Lig – but a mammoth fee in 1999, equivalent to €26million – proved to be money down the drain.
He made just 11 La Liga appearances, scoring one goal, and spent most of his time on the club’s sent out on loan – first back to Fenerbahce, then to Rayo Vallecano – before returning to Turkey to sign for Fener’s fierce rivals Galatasaray.
Real Madrid sticks out like a sore thumb on Baljic’s otherwise ordinary CV.
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Kaka
“I lost the joy of playing football a bit [in Madrid],” Kaka later admitted of his time at the Bernabeu.
The Brazilian icon wasn’t an out-and-out disaster in the Spanish capital. He had his moments. But it would also be fair to say that he never came close to recapturing his Ballon d’Or-winning peak at AC Milan, or justified his world record fee.
While others like Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo would ultimately make Florentino Perez’s lavish second Galacticos project a great success, delivering multiple Champions League trophies, Kaka had returned to Milan by the time they won La Decima in 2014.
He did win a Copa del Rey in 2011, but was an unused substitute in the final victory over Barcelona, and the La Liga title in 2011-12, albeit in a fairly fringe role that saw him start fewer than half of their matches.
It’s easy to forget now that he was only 27 when he signed for Madrid in 2009, and theoretically might’ve had his best years ahead of him. Things never quite worked out that way.
Eden Hazard
On the one hand, Hazard did alright for himself out of his move to Real Madrid. He was incredibly well remunerated in wages, all the while padding out his honours list with two La Liga titles, a Copa del Rey and a long-awaited first Champions League.
On the other hand, the Belgian winger had next to no influence in Madrid winning any of those trophies. He made just 76 appearances, 44 starts and five full completed 90 minutes. He notched just seven goals and 12 assists. Not once did he play in El Clasico.
That’s a frankly appalling return for Real Madrid’s club-record signing, costing a fee of approximately €120million. Fitness issues ultimately robbed us of seeing anything like the special player that had lit up the Premier League with Chelsea.
The fact he called time on his career at the age of 32, having had the final year of his contract paid up, tells us everything about what a sorry time of it he’d had in Madrid.