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Nearly signed First XI

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
Henry and Vieira was also great that World Cup, especially Paddy.

That Brazil-France match, not sure I’ve ever seen such a dominant performance from a midfielder as Zidane’s.


The pirouette he sells Gilberto at the end is filth
 

Shalmaneser V

Active Member
Have to agree to disagree, Zidane absolutely ran the show in every knockout game.

I corrected the typo.

Zidane was indeed excellent and decisive. Particularly in the games against Spain and Brazil but Vieiria was the unsung hero who carried France all the way through. For me he was the real star.
 

Shalmaneser V

Active Member
Ribéry would've been such a Wenger player. Would've left for Real though when they came calling around 2009/10/ iirc. Bayern not selling him back then kind of put a ceiling to his reputation. He won a CL but didn't play the final, and he was absolutely phenomenal at his peak and probably the best winger in Europe apart from Messi/Ronaldo (who were/are strikers anyway), but is somehow always a bit underrated.


Ribéry in his prime was a gangster player indeed. My mates always argued about who was the better winger between he and Robben. It was like the Messi/Ronaldo debate back in the day. Only they played in the same team. Weird.
 

Mo Britain

Doom Monger
LINE-UP-Wenger-Nearly-XI.jpg

agree with this one
You left out Cruyff and Platini???
 

Tir Na Nog

Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes

Country: Ireland
Maradona surely has to be in there, wasn't he literally begging us to sign him only for the league to block it?
 

Corbulo

Active Member
Buffon
Sagnol - Kompany - Van Dijk - Roberto Carlos
Seedorf - Modric
Messi - Maradona - Cristiano Ronaldo
Ibrahimovic​
 

Heskey

🌑 🌘🌗🌖🌕🌔🌓🌒
Trusted ⭐
This thread is such a depressing read seeing the players we missed out on for various reasons..

So many of these players were realistic targets for us at that specific time, and fell through. For many of those as well, they could have had pivotal differences for those particular seasons - especially seeing as we often either completely refused to buy another target, or, due to financial strains and poor scouting/last minute decision making ended up with some cheap alternatives who rarely made much impact.
 

Mrs Bergkamp

Double Dusted
Dusted 🔻
This thread is interesting but these signings would never have happened at the right time to make a difference. These players span over ten years of misses and had we signed Makalele for example, we might never have seen our Vieira. What we needed was about two or three at specific times after 2004. I wouldn't change our Invincibles for anyone.
 

MD3 Gunner

All Deals Off
Before anybody says this pattern of players having unsuccessful trials only occured in the Wenger era, a reminder the likes of Peter Osgood, Billy Bremner and Ruud Guillt were all turned down
 

MD3 Gunner

All Deals Off
Not sure how many of you have heard of Vasilis Hatzipanagis, but thought some of you might find this story interesting. Hatzipanagis is probably the greatest player you've never heard of and is wideley regarded as Greece's greatest ever player earning himself the nickname "The Greek Maradona" and in 1977 after an injury, he was sent to England for treatment. Whilst in England he began training with the Arsenal squad and impressed so much that Terry Neill tried to sign him.

Unfortunately, he was tied to a horrible contract which meant he could never leave his club and he remained there until his retirement..

And when you take into consideration that Ruud Gullit also had a trial at Arsenal apparently it shows you this trend of missing out on top players happened well before Wenger as well..
 

Red London

Anti-Simp Culture
Trusted ⭐
Wow, I seriously wonder how that team would really do. Potential world domination or complete disaster because of imbalance and ego?
Would need a real mother ****er of a manager to keep those man in that dressing room happy.

I feel like only prime Mourinho would have been able to handle it, weird to say considering how bad of a man manager he is now :lol:
 

GDeep™

League is very weak
Every manager can name a dream team of players they missed out on, Ferguson for example tried to sign Ronaldo, Zidane, Ronaldinho, Shearer, Vieira, Campbell, Terry, Buffon, Batistuta etc.
 

Mitch

Blonde Brigade Grand Wizard
When on earth did we "nearly" sign Messi & Ronaldo? Imagine that haha.

Apparently Wenger and Ronaldo 's agent Mendes had verbally agreed a contract that Ronaldo was signing for Arsenal. Ronaldo only days later signed the contract with Utd. Wenger refused to work with Mendes after that.

Wenger enquired about Messi before he was promoted to the Barcelona main squad but Barcelona weren't interested.
 

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