Always linked, never signed: The Premier League stars that got away
Inexplicably, some very good footballers never manage to find their way to the Premier League, even though it is of course without question the best league in the world as we all know. Some players manage to carve out reasonably successful careers entirely in such footballing backwaters as ‘Spain’ or ‘Italy’ or even ‘South America’. It’s a tragic fate, it really is. Yet that abject and career-defining failure to make it to the Premier League will never stop our brave and persistent media linking them with such a move until the seas boil and claim us all.
Here are five of our favourite transfer window staples who never made it to England. A fate, by the way, that is so clearly and obviously the destiny of Dusan Vlahovic – a man who answers the never-asked question of “What would a hunky Darren Anderton look like?” – that we’re already pencilling him in for the 2026 version of this particular bit of transfer window fluff.
Wesley Sneijder
Where else to start? In a wildly successful career, Sneijder won league titles in four countries as well as a Champions League and more cups and other pots and pans than can be counted. He collected over 130 caps for the Netherlands in a 15-year international career that took him all the way to the World Cup final in 2010. That was quite a year for Sneijder: in those 12 months alone he also won Serie A, the Coppa Italia, the Champions League and the Club World Cup with Inter. He was named UEFA Club Midfielder of the Year, took home the Silver Ball and Bronze Boot at the World Cup, where he was also named in the team of the tournament. He also earned a spot in the FIFPro team of the year. There are plenty of great players who don’t achieve all that in a career, never mind a single year. And he had 15 other often-glorious years at the top of the game. It is on the face of it, a career to be enormously proud of. And yet it is sadly all for nought, those achievements all turning to ash because, despite near-constant links across every single one of the 6036 days between his debut for Ajax in 2003 and retirement in 2019, he somehow inexplicably never managed to sign for Manchester United.
Kalidou Koulibaly
The man has played over 300 games for Napoli and won more than 50 caps for Senegal. But the sheer grim relentlessness of the transfer rumour industry has so thoroughly addled our weary, failing brain that the first football team we summon upon hearing his name is Chelsea. It both saddens and reassures us that we are almost certain we’re not alone in this utter insanity.
Julian Draxler
While some become specifically identified with a specific club during their career-long failure to Test Themselves In The Best League In The World, others become associated with the simpler yet far more nebulous concept of joining the league itself. Like there’s a US-style draft or something. Draxler is one such player, for whom it would be easier to list the Premier League clubs with which he has never been linked. He’s perfect here because he is just about a big enough name with a successful enough career and impressive enough CV to be linked with any of the Big Six – and he has been, frequently, currently Tottenham – but also that vague, intangible yet very real step below the absolute elite that means you can also safely link him with your Newcastles, your West Hams, your Leicesters and even recently and quite loudly the Leeds Uniteds of this world without seeming too much of a crazy person. The contract he signed with Schalke at 19 years old in 2013 set the tone for a career of non-specific Premier League avoidance. Note the specificity of the Bundesliga and the generality of the English links from the BBC’s report at the time: ‘Schalke midfielder Julian Draxler has ended speculation linking him with local Bundesliga rivals Borussia Dortmund and the Premier League by signing a two-year contract extension.’ Nearly nine years later, neither that contract or any other he has signed has ever in fact ‘ended speculation’ linking him with the Premier League – and it never will – and yet he’s never made it here. Never signed for Dortmund either, now we come to think of it.
Leandro Damiao
To my mind the ultimate despite – no, scratch that, because of – his relative obscurity. You’ve all heard of him, you’ve all read about him; almost none of you have ever seen him play a single second of football. I certainly haven’t. Your Sneijders, your Koulibalys, the Gaitans of this world – they all have demonstrable, provable, visible careers. I’m still not 100% certain Leandro isn’t one of those scams that pop up every now and then when some internet prankster invents a fake player who then turns up in a ’50 to watch’ feature in a theoretically reputable newspaper. Because his career has been played almost entirely in Brazil and over the last few years Japan bar a brief and unsuccessful three-game loan spell at Real Betis, Leandro remains far more famous in this country as ‘that fella who was apparently on the brink of joining Spurs every single day circa 2012 to 2015’ than for any actual football exploits. Entirely unfair on him, of course, but this is the reality. If The Athletic haven’t already flown someone to Japan to interview a confused but polite Kawasaki Frontale frontman about his infamy in English transfer rumour circles as he patiently explains that actually he came far closer to joining Napoli really, it must at least be on their list. Couple of extra bonus points for having played almost none of his football in Europe but scoring one of his three Brazil goals at Craven Cottage, and also for being dubbed ‘The New Ronaldo’ BY RONALDO HIMSELF. Without wishing to get too tinfoil hat about it all, if we were going to invent a Brazilian footballer we would totally have him score one of his three international goals at Craven Cottage and be dubbed the ‘The New Ronaldo’ by the man himself. That’s all we’re saying.
Nicolas Gaitan
It’s a wildly unscientific approach, sure, but a Google search for ‘Nicolas Gaitan’ produces 1,830,000 results. A search for ‘Nicolas Gaitan Manchester United’ (a club for whom, as you should now realise given the nature of this feature, he never played) produces 925,000 results. A search for ‘Nicolas Gaitan Benfica’ (a club he represented over 250 times) produces 339,000 results. We’d be the first to concede that the internet has been a bit of a game-changer for humanity, but it’s not all progress is it? Currently a free agent and, despite being linked to Manchester United since the dawn of time, somehow still only 33 if United fancy finally scratching that itch.
