But, as you know, trans­fers - this is not an easy task and does not always pay off; a sig­nif­i­cant part of them is poor­ly thought out and is car­ried out in a hur­ry.

“Arse­nal” made every play­er’s dream come true by sign­ing Swedish star Kim Kjell­ström on loan, but the dream quick­ly turned into a night­mare.

Injuries and sus­pen­sions forced the club to sign a tem­po­rary mid­field­er on dead­line day in Jan­u­ary 2014, and des­per­a­tion led them to ignore a back injury dis­cov­ered dur­ing Kjell­ström’s treat­ment. He made his debut only at the end of March, by which time his hopes for the title had long fad­ed. Kjell­ström played only three more times for the club before he was sent back to Spar­tak.

The trans­fer of Swedish mid­field­er Kim Kjäll­ström cost Spar­tak 3 mil­lion euros.

Even by today’s stan­dards, Bal­a­ban’s trans­fer would be con­sid­ered a com­plete fail­ure! In Croa­t­ia, the foot­baller scored in batch­es. The foot­baller played at most two match­es for the club. FC were so dis­ap­point­ed in the for­ward that they loaned him out, and in 2003 they already ter­mi­nat­ed his con­tract.

Bal­a­ban end­ed up in Brugge, where he again began scor­ing goals against his oppo­nents with envi­able reg­u­lar­i­ty. Aston Vil­la are still try­ing to for­get that dis­as­trous trans­fer.

A sto­ry from a fan­ta­sy series. In 1996, Southamp­ton coach Gra­ham Sunas received a call from an unknown num­ber, the man intro­duced him­self as Bal­lon d’Or win­ner George Weah and advised him to pay atten­tion to the tal­ent­ed play­er Ali Dia, his cousin, who played for PSG and played 13 match­es for the Sene­galese nation­al team.

Of course, it was all a lie: Sumas received a call from a per­son from some uni­ver­si­ty who, for fun, want­ed to assign his class­mate to the Pre­mier League club. He only played street foot­ball. And this trick worked: the trans­fer win­dow was clos­ing, so Southamp­ton signed a one-month con­tract with Dia, and a week lat­er Soumas decid­ed to try him in a Pre­mier League match.

He entered the field in the 32nd minute, the coach had to make a reverse sub­sti­tu­tion in the 85th. And it was a com­plete pro­fa­na­tion.

“He ran across the field like Bam­bi on the ice. It was quite a sight. He did­n’t seem to under­stand what to do on the field at all. I don’t even know if he spoke Eng­lish. We nev­er spoke to him“,” a club play­er described the sit­u­a­tion.

“The sto­ry that we were scammed is com­plete non­sense. I knew he was hope­less in his first 10 min­utes on the field. What­ev­er, I real­ized this as soon as the guy joined the team, but at that time I had no choice”, said the team coach.

Many foot­ball stu­dents are some­what sad that the days when you could sim­ply call the Pre­mier League coach and sign your class­mate to a cool club have long since sunk into obliv­ion. This has nev­er hap­pened before in the his­to­ry of foot­ball.