Chapter 243: Chapter 242: Figo Backstabs Barça, Is the Coach Trigella or Maxa? (24th Update)
All summer long, the whole world watched the European Championship.
As soon as the European Championship was over,
the major clubs that had been lying in wait sprang into action.
Buy him! Buy him! Buy him!
But nobody expected that the heaviest deal of the summer would come from Portugal.
On July 24th, Real Madrid announced the signing of Barcelona’s captain Luis Figo for a transfer fee of 60 million Euros.
This transfer shook Europe.
It could essentially be understood as Messi joining Real Madrid, Ginola joining Barcelona.
The deal was outrageous.
It was full of too many coincidences and calculations.
Figo had been with Barcelona for five years, and this year, he had reached his peak; he hoped to earn higher wages.
However, even the emerging Ronaldo didn’t get a better salary at Barcelona and thus left for Inter Milan.
Naturally, Figo didn’t get the satisfactory price he had hoped for.
At the time, both Barcelona and Real Madrid were undergoing changes, and Figo’s agent got in touch with the latter.
Florentino, announcing his candidacy for president of Real Madrid, declared he would bring Barcelona’s star player to Real Madrid. This won him Melinge’s support and eventually the election.
Previously, Florentino and Figo had a secret agreement that if he became president of Real Madrid, Figo would join them, or else he would owe Florentino a large sum, reportedly 30 million Euros.
But if Florentino did not become president of Real Madrid, he would owe Figo money.
The specifics of the deal were affirmed and denied by various parties, but there was definitely such a deal.
In the end, to avoid paying a huge sum, Figo could only join Real Madrid.
This event dealt a huge blow to Barcelona, significantly reducing their brand value and making them the laughingstock of the football world.
If it hadn’t been for the later rise of Barcelona’s Dream Team II and III dynasties, with stars like Ronaldinho, Eto’o, Deco, the MSN, and Haibabu emerging to save the day, Barcelona might have been down and out.
And thus, Real Madrid welcomed their era of the Galácticos!
Besides Figo, there were many other exciting transfers that summer.
Lazio signed Argentine striker Crespo from Parma for 56.8 million Euros.
Barcelona used 40 million of the 60 million Euros from Figo’s sale to bring in the first-generation little flying man Overmars from Arsenal, but this proved to be a very unsuccessful deal.
Roma paid 36.2 million Euros to Fiorentina for their war god Batistuta and gave him a footballer’s highest annual salary of 71.5 million US Dollars.
This was an immediately effective deal, as both Roma and Batistuta clinched the Serie A championship they longed for by the season’s end.
Paris Saint-Germain took the French alien Anelka from Real Madrid for 34.5 million Euros.
Leeds United, beating Manchester United to the punch, signed Rio Ferdinand from West Ham United for 26 million Euros—the most famous Rio before Messi!
Real Madrid signed defensive midfielder Flavio Consicao from the recent La Liga champions Deportivo La Coruña for 25 million Euros, but this would become one of Florentino’s top ten worst signings.
It would have been better to buy the other Consicao, the Portuguese Golden Generation player Sérgio Consicao, who scored three goals and won the Bronze Boot at the recent European Championship.
Parma paid 25 million Euros to sign Milosevic, the European Championship Golden Boot winner, from Zaragoza in La Liga.
Juventus secured Trezeguet from Monaco for 23.2 million Euros, who helped the French national team to the Golden Ball victory. Looking back, this was also one of the most cost-effective deals of the year.
But at this stage, Juventus was still quite hesitant.
A year ago, they had brought over Thierry Henry from Monaco, part of the striking duo, but he flopped and was sold off to Arsenal.
Juventus was worried that Trezeguet might have the same issue.
This summer’s tenth-ranked transfer deal saw Lazio pay 23 million Euros to take core player Claudio Lopez from UEFA Champions League runners-up Valencia.
Such leading transactions made European football even more exciting.
Similarly, they affected player transfers in other regions of Europe as well.
Take, for example, Sporting Lisbon’s Quaresma.
Since Barcelona’s acquisition of Figo, Sporting had established a friendly cooperation channel with Barcelona.
Simon’s high-price deal was one of those.
Even though Simon hadn’t fully adapted to Barcelona last season, Barça was still willing to bring in the next Figo from Sporting Lisbon... Quaresma.
But then the Figo transfer to Real Madrid happened.
Now, Barcelona’s fans utterly despised Figo and everything associated with him.
Such as Sporting Lisbon, such as Portugal.
Interestingly, for the next twenty years, Barcelona fans would not warm to Portugal, because there would be someone more detestable than Figo emerging, who, after the summer of ’09, would become the target of all the Barcelona fans’ curses and foul language for many years to come.
Ronaldo: Who could be so hateful?
Originally, Barcelona had already bid up to 8 million Euros for Quaresma from an initial 4 million, and it seemed discussions could continue to a potential 10 million Euro mark.
But in light of this event, the Barcelona fans collectively stated they couldn’t accept another Portuguese player.
Barcelona’s executive team then officially closed the transfer negotiations with Sporting Lisbon.
Quaresma was forced to stay with the team.
Of course, Sporting Lisbon was still marketing Quaresma to clubs in the Premier League and Serie A, but the transfer fee certainly wasn’t as high as what Barcelona had offered.
While everyone was still waiting to see where Quaresma would end up, Sporting Lisbon’s upper management underwent massive changes.
The club’s president was jailed due to corruption, and a year earlier, a financial magnate backing Trigella, who had been jailed for tax issues, declared his candidacy for the presidency of Sporting Lisbon, promising to allocate at least 10 million Euros for transfer fees to build Sporting Lisbon.
He wanted to transform Sporting from a feeder club into a true powerhouse of football!
A real giant with the status similar to Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, competing in the Champions League over the long term!
With no better candidate available, he quickly became the new president of Sporting Lisbon.
Thereafter, the club announced with great fanfare that they had terminated Matrazzi’s contract and were bringing back the miraculous coach, Trigella!
Under Matrazzi’s leadership, Sporting had made no progress in the past year, finishing fourth last year and fourth again this year.
But Trigella was not only a club stalwart from the youth academy, but he also led Moreirense to a double championship this year.
Sporting Lisbon’s fans undoubtedly preferred Trigella as head coach.
It was, so to speak, a highly anticipated return!
The only controversy was whether Maxa was a better choice?
Whether Trigella should serve as Maxa’s assistant coach?
[PS: I’m really at the end of my rope now, no more for today. Tomorrow’s update might only come in the evening. Thank you all for your support, thanks everyone for your subscriptions, tips, monthly tickets, recommendation tickets, likes, positive reviews, shares, and forwards! Thank you!!!]
