Your club buying a player you’ve previously signed on Football Manager is one of life’s great joys – but as Arsenal, Tottenham and Newcastle United fans among others know, it doesn’t always end well.
If, like us, you spent the best part of your adolescent and early 20s years religiously playing Championship or Football Manager, you will know all about the various wonderkids who have graced the game.
Landing a young prospect at the start of the game and then moulding your team around him is the best thing about the game, and sometimes those players go on to become stars in the real world, too. Others, however, have ended up in the Premier League and crushed all our dreams.
Kim Kallstrom
An unbelievable bargain on Football Manager 2003, Kim Kallstrom could be snaffled from Djurgardens for less than a million quid and would soon be worth ten times more. His goalkeeper team-mate Andreas Isaksson wasn’t half bad either.
In fairness, Kallstrom went on to enjoy six seasons at Lyon and win over 100 caps for Sweden in real life, and it wasn’t until he was 231 that fans saw him grace the Premier League when Arsene Wenger brought him in on a six-month loan from Spartak Moscow in January 2014.
Still, it didn’t make his lack of impact any less disappointing. Hit by injuries, Kallstrom’s spell in north London can be filed under the ‘blink and you’ll miss it category’ as he only featured three times in the league, although he did score a crucial FA Cup penalty against Reading.
Anthony Vanden Borre
It says much about Anthony Vanden Borre’s time in England that he is best remembered for his role in a classic Chris Kamara blooper on Soccer Saturday.
You’ve all seen the clip by now. Jeff Stelling asks Kammy what’s going down at Fratton Park, and he waffles on for a bit completely oblivious to the fact that Vanden Borre has been sent off. It’s vintage stuff.
Anyway, while fellow Football Manager wonderkids Vincent Kompany and Romelu Lukaku went on to bigger and better things after leaving Anderlecht in real life, those formative years were the best it got for the original AVB.
8 years ago today Chris Kamara missed that red card at Portsmouth. 😂
Happy #StKamaraDay everyone! pic.twitter.com/cT3QuFVN5I— Soccer AM (@SoccerAM) April 3, 2018
Ibrahima Bakayoko
The original and best, Bakayoko was a wonderkid on Championship Manager 97/98 so just imagine what it must have been like to be an Everton fan when they signed him from…
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