OTB Football
Transfers that almost happened but… didn’t | Ronaldo’s proposed move to Rangers | And Pele to Hannover?
29 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Off the ball breakfast.
I find it funny your analogy for this Champions League is that it's a sinking ship. Well, am I talking about the world or am I talking about football? Either way, Atlanta are getting out.
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Now, if you love sporting nostalgia and football transfers that almost happened and didn't happen in a world when we didn't have Fabrizio Romano and David Ornstein telling us about every transfer before it even happened. Richie McCormack has decided to take a deep dive into all of it. You know what, Rich? You don't stay away for long. Nathan Murphy back in Golf Weekly this week. Was he?
And here you are back in OTB Towers talking to us again.
There you go. It's delightful to be back up here at full two floors back to the Towers to be speaking to yourself about this. Well, yeah.
so podcast stuff this is going to be a six part series yeah six part series so the basic synopsis of it is the series is called Sliding Doors and for those who don't get the reference it's in relation to a 90s movie that starred Gwyneth Paltrow I was going to say are Gwyneth Paltrow fans going to try to go oh my god someone's finally done a six episode deep dive into the film it only dawned on me when I finished the thing I was like people mightn't actually get what Sliding Doors means so it's this sense of missed opportunity and
what might have been. And in the instances of these transfers, they kind of range across the spectrum of would have had a massive influence on the other club that could have signed this particular player that's the subject of this episode. And there is one that would have had minor influence, but it's certainly an interesting one that happened just this past year.
So it kind of takes in the breadth of the lot of them. And yeah, it's thrown up a couple more since then. possibly going to have to get around to if there's ever time for a series two.
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Chapter 2: What is the concept behind the 'Sliding Doors' podcast series?
What would have happened if Ronaldinho rocked up in the Scottish Premiership?
Yeah, but the one we have that I think starts off the series is Ronaldo, 90s Ronaldo, the good Ronaldo, almost signing for Rangers. Now, I kind of put this down to, yeah, right, whatever. And there's a lot of these stories you kind of initially do. This series obviously goes to those particular potential transfers that went beyond that little, ah yeah, right, whatever.
These are transfers that almost happened. So you cast your mind back to, I think it was the summer of 1997. Ronaldo has become disenfranchised with life in Barcelona after just one year because certain promises were made to him. Those promises aren't going to be met. There's going to be changes in management, etc., etc., So he gets a bit antsy in his looking around.
Now his agents are casting around Europe and at the time the big money was still being spent in Italy. So obviously a lot of the big Italian teams, and if you go back through old episodes of Gazetta on YouTube, which I'm prone to do, you'll find about half a dozen Serie A sides of the time that were interested in signing Ronaldo.
The one that jumped out at me, and it's one that he revealed afterwards, And again, I was like, yeah, right, whatever. But I went and did a bit of digging, went into the newspaper archives and all of this. And there was a very real element of truth to Rangers' interest in signing Ronaldo in the summer of 1997.
Now, if you look at the modern day Rangers, you kind of think, there's no way they could financially compete.
They were double contracting at the time, weren't they?
They had an obscene amount of talent within their squad. So I think that summer, the likes of Jörg Alberts came on board, but they'd already signed, obviously, Paul Gascoigne, Brian Laudrup. They had a really, really good squad.
Unfortunately, they couldn't get it done in Europe, which is why the Ronaldo story came to the fore, and which is why Dave Murray, who was the chairman at the time, had the phenomenal idea of potentially signing Ronaldo, offering him... the moon, the stars and everything that is above Glasgow and saying that he wouldn't even have to play in the Scottish Premiership of a Saturday.
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Chapter 3: Why did Ronaldo almost sign for Rangers in 1997?
Now, as I mentioned at the start, some of these transfers are kind of like, it might have been a bit of crack if Ronaldo went to Rangers or if Mikey Johnson had ended up with Flamengo, like the story of that almost happening.
But as I mentioned in the podcast, nothing goes so far or no move, one move goes so far as to defining the legacy of one club and it's also its rivalry with another as the move of Di Stefano to Real Madrid because he should have been a Barcelona player. Like in all intents and purposes, there's footage of digging around in pursuit of material for this.
found footage on YouTube buried in a Di Stefano documentary in Spanish of him training in a Barcelona gear. And you're like, it's a different world. Like, do Real Madrid win the first handful of European Cups if Di Stefano is not a key member of that attack? Probably not. They have a very good side regardless, like your Raymond Copas and your Ferenc Puskas of this world.
You're adding the player of his time.
The player of his time is Alfredo Di Stefano. If he's not there, does it happen or not? There was a really complicated backstory to how he ended up at Real Madrid. So initially there was a player strike in Argentina. Players weren't happy that they weren't able to negotiate contracts in line with Real. you know, modern pay scales, etc.
So a bunch of them, and there was a handful of players from River Plate in particular, ended up in Colombia in what was a breakaway league called the Dimeor, where they were offering these massive contracts.
It was the live golf of its era. You were going to be banned by FIFA by playing in it.
If you ever look up Di Stefano's Wikipedia page and it says like four games internationally for Colombia, this is why. They're not official Colombia games because Colombia, for that period of time, were banned by FIFA because of this outlaw league. Di Stefano's one of a load of Argentinians that end up there.
He ends up getting a bit tired from his, you know, different tours that they have to do, one of which takes him to the Chamartin at the time, which is what the Bernabeu's called at the time. For a series of friendlies, one's with Norrköping, another one is with Real Madrid. He performed so well with Real Madrid, Real actually start courting him.
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Chapter 4: What were the circumstances leading to Ronaldo's disenchantment at Barcelona?
He had been a defector from Hungary and... ended up signing for Barcelona via, again, kind of backwards methods. But one of the things that got that over the line was the Barcelona board's relatively really good relationship with the Franco government, which goes against everything that we've ever been taught about Spanish football and about Barcelona in particular.
But no, Franco doesn't get involved in the Di Stefano case. I don't want to give too much away about it. There is talk of initially before he signs for, or before he is able to begin playing football for Barca, of banning foreign players in Spain to put a stop to the Cabalists and the DeStefanos of this world.
There's also a really odd suggestion from the Spanish FA about what they might do with DeStefano while he is in Spain. And then there's a massive Italian club are somehow thrown into the mix as well. It is one of the most intriguing transfer sagas you will ever come across because, as I say, it does so much towards defining the successes, early successes.
Like, Madrid only had a couple of league titles to their name before the Stefano arrives. They suddenly become a super club afterwards. It's no, you know, those things are inextricably linked. Barcelona had been, up until that point, the more successful of the two clubs. that begins to trail off after the Stefano heads.
They do have a couple of league championships between the arrival of Cruyff in the late 80s and this period here in the late 50s. But it tapers off and Real Madrid are off into the stratosphere because of this thing.
I think before Cruyff comes in, they'd either come rid of more trophies than Barcelona. The 60s and the late 50s, obviously when Real became incredible. was basically a barren wasteland.
Yeah, and the Franco regime did begin to have a further impact on Barcelona and Catalan efforts for their own recognition, etc., etc., during that interregnum between Real Madrid's success initially and that Cruyff period, and there's a bit of neuroses creep into it, into Barcelona, but you're kind of asking yourself how much of that would have been cured if they had assigned to Stefano, or if the Stefano signature and move had actually gone ahead, because,
it was as good as done. So, hence the episode.
Six-part series. Murray Kempis, the Spurs will also come up as well. So next Monday, if you want to hear about Ronaldo, how he could have maybe ended up with Rangers, it's going to be available on the OTB Football Podcast feed, I assume as well, Richie, wherever anyone gets their podcasts. Absolutely, William. Don't stay away as long as next time.
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