Soundoff: Who is Football’s Biggest Traitor?

By: Jan | November 28th, 2009

I’ve been surfing around looking for bloggable El Clásico related material. I came across pillow fights disguised as boxing, black magic and French C.Ronaldo impersonators, but I couldn’t find anything relevant, that hasn’t already been covered by our Barcelona and Real Madrid Offsides anyway. Then I found this little video, which chronicles El Clásico’s biggest traitors – from a Barcelona perspective. With Spain and England turning tomorrow into a Super Derby Sunday, I thought it might be time to honor those brave men, who crossed cities, broke taboos, embraced change and explored the human side of the enemy – all in search of a bigger paycheck. Get a dog for loyalty, it’s time to honor the biggest traitors in football.

The above video elected Luis Figo as Barcelona’s biggest traitor, and given that he managed to stir up emotions that made pigs fly, it’s not a bad choice. I personally also quite like Bernd Schuster’s lifetime achievements. After moving from Barcelona to Real Madrid, he added stints at Real’s crosstown rivals Atletico and then moved to Leverkusen, Cologne’s cross-river rivals – the club he started his career at.

In the Bundesliga, Miroslav Klose probably rates as the one active player with the worst recent transfer saga when he moved to Bremen’s Lederhosen embracing rivals in the south of Germany. Late in the 2006/2007 season, Klose happened to randomly bump into Bayern’s coach Hitzfeld and manager Hoeness at Hanover`s airport. On the spur of the moment, the three decided to sit down for a coffee and talk about football in general, but certainly not about a possible transfer to Bayern in particular. At least that was the official version. The unofficial version was that Bayern added a few Euros more to Klose’s transfer fee, to stop Werder from taking Bayern to court for tapping up their player. Klose then flew to Bremen’s UEFA Cup semi final, although only the lineups released by UEFA remain as evidence, that Klose was on the pitch. In the second leg Klose then got himself sent off after 10 minutes and after another two months he was presented as one of Bayern’s summer signings alongside Luca Toni and Ribery. When Klose returned to the Weserstadion he was greeted with swear words and all the gesturing necessary to get the point across by the fans and a brutal sliding tackle by his former team mate Naldo, that took him out of the match. The referee felt that justice had been served and decided a yellow was enough for Naldo. Klose’s post match response: “No hard feelings”. Uli Hoeness had already brought him some ice and a copy of his account statement at half-time.

It’s one of the murkiest transfers in recent Bundesliga history, but it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to come up with an even bigger traitor, I guess. So fire away and recall all those bitter memories you thought you had successfully suppressed.