TM Gallery
©IMAGO
In the long history of football, there have always been cases of players who, for a variety of reasons, did not end up at their dream club. Or clubs that missed out on a future world star. Or narrow transfers that did not happen for other reasons. Transfermarkt covers these in the ongoing series of “almost transfers”. These also include Eintracht Frankfurt’s futile efforts to sign Bayern’s shooting star Michael Olise (22), as sporting director Markus Krösche has now revealed.
“We looked into him three years ago,” said the 44-year-old on the “Sky90” show. At that time, the attacker, who had a dream start with five goals and three assists in six games for Munich, was still wearing the jersey of the then English second division club Reading FC. “He had an exit clause at the time. I think it was 8 or 9 million. But we didn’t have the money to pay that at the time.” Instead, Crystal Palace won the race with a transfer fee of 9.3 million euros. Olise developed into a key player and a French international, and brought in 53 million euros with the move to Bayern. “He is a very, very good player,” said Krösche. “Certain things just happen. A lot of things went very well.”
Union Berlin, on the other hand, was interested in a seasoned world star two years ago. According to information from “Bild”, the Irons tried to secure the services of Brazilian Marcelo (36), whose contract with Real Madrid expired in the summer of 2022 after 15 years. However, a transfer did not materialize, and the paper does not go into the background in more detail. A few months later, Union tried the next former Madrid player, but the signing of Isco (32) also failed in the final stages and made plenty of headlines. The following gallery of the biggest near-transfers in football history reveals what this was all about and which other transfers also failed to make it through.
