Sneaking out the window and going by just ‘Steve’: 10 weirdest transfers abroad from English clubs

‘Che Adams to Torino’. Four little words that you would never have put together other than in the strangest recesses of a buggy pirated copy of an out-of-date edition of Football Manager.

Yet there it is, in actual reality, actually having happened, with the Scotland forward sealing a switch after his contract with Southampton expired.

In honour of that slightly wrong-feeling headline, we present ten previous transfers away from these shores that bore very similar energy.

10) Jesse Lingard to FC Seoul (2024)
Talk about a Korea move hahahahahaha.

Kicking us off because actually, this one weirdly feels right somehow, the very hot-and-cold former Manchester United man had been without a club for seven months after being released from Nottingham Forest after just one year at the club.

Things didn’t start very well for Lingard, who was criticised by his manager for allegedly half-arsing his way through an early appearance from the bench, then soon picked up a knee injury that forced him to have corrective surgery. But he’s been starting regularly since returning to action in May, grabbing two goals in his past five appearances and wearing the captain’s armband.

9) Jermaine Pennant to Real Zaragoza (2009)
Pennant’s later move from Stoke to Indian side Pune City, again, somehow feels right – but those seven months in Spain after leaving Liverpool seemed odd at the time and only got stranger.

You know the story by now, of course. Pennant was disciplined by the club for repeatedly missing training and was sent home to join Stoke, with the winger leaving his Porsche at Zaragoza rail station for six months, gathering many, many parking tickets.

He eventually remembered he’d left it unlocked and with the keys in the glove box and phoned his translator Fernando to pick it up, effectively gifting him the car rather than arranging for it to be sold. Imagine being able to be that flippant about a car. What a life.

MORE ON TRANSFERS FROM F365:
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👉 Every Premier League transfer from the summer of 2024
👉 The 20 biggest transfers from the summer of 2024

8) David Bentley to Rostov (2012)
A double-opportunity for a segue between one brand of sports car and another, or from once-promising-but-ultimately-underwhelming English winger to another. Pick whichever you prefer and then imagine we did that. Good, wasn’t it?

But Bentley wasn’t good for Tottenham, joining to some fanfare as a promising 24-year-old from Blackburn and scoring a wonderful goal against his former club Arsenal before proceeding to do essentially nothing except go out on a series of loans for the rest of his time in north London.

Rostov was the strangest of those switches, with Bentley becoming the first Englishman in Russian Premier League history, making seven appearances before being ruled out with an ankle injury and returning to Spurs. He retired less than two years later aged 29.

7) Graziano Pelle to Shandong Luneng (2016)
So on the face of things not so odd at the time, when the Chinese Super League was very much the Saudi Pro League of its day, signing up mediocre and over-the-hill Premier League players for stupid money.

But even still…31-year-old Pelle had scored 23 goals in 68 league outings for Southampton, which is decent. And yes, he looked like an Italian child’s drawing of Superman. But ‘seventh best-paid player in the world’ decent and handsome?

We’re not saying that was what prompted the Chinese government to bring in their transfer tax in a bid to stop looking so ridiculous to the rest of the world, but we can’t definitively rule it out either.

6) Jay Bothroyd to Perugia (2003)
Essentially, Bothroyd’s career was what an 11-year-old of relatively limited ambitions would write for themselves as their year six English project, which I know for a fact because it’s more or less what I wrote for mine.

‘And then I got a move to Italy for a year, and then I went to Wales, and then I got an England cap out of nowhere (but just one), and then I went to play in Japan for a bit and played loads of Nintendo.’

Anyway, that move to Italy. Having seen just how brilliantly Robbie Keane’s move from Coventry City to Inter had gone three years earlier*, Serie A side and UEFA Cup qualifiers Perugia, of all clubs, snapped up 21-year-old Bothroyd after he scored eight league goals in the second tier for Coventry.

Bothroyd actually played a fair bit in his first season, scoring seven goals in 39 appearances in all competitions, but was loaned out to Blackburn the following year before leaving to join Charlton in a permanent move.

( *not really at all)

5) Steve Harkness to Benfica (1999)
Carlisle, Liverpool, Huddersfield Town (loan), Southend United (loan), Blackburn Rovers, Sheffield Wednesday, Chester City. An entirely normal and respectable up-and-back-down-again career trajectory for a transmillennial footballer, we’re sure we can all agree.

Only…omitted from the middle of that list is a move to Portuguese giants Benfica. And they paid an actual fee for him.

Yes of course Graeme Souness was manager at the time. Yes, he also signed Michael Thomas and Gary Charles. But Harkness gets the nod here because of this absolutely delightful detail: the back of his shirt at Benfica didn’t read ‘Harkness’, but just ‘Steve’.

4) Nicklas Bendtner to Juventus (2012)
As a rule, your football career should ideally not be associated with the word ‘pants’. Bendtner managed it twice over.

It’s not that he was properly dreadful or anything; simply nothing like as good as he often gave the impression of thinking he was at Arsenal, and tediously daft to go along with it. Basically a less fun Mario Balotelli.

Weird then that after scoring a whopping eight goals on loan to Sunderland, Juventus came calling for another loan, with an option to buy. We’ve checked, and Juve were very much back on their feet by this juncture following their relegation for their part in the Calicipoli scandal of 2006; they had just won Serie A when they signed Bendtner.

Would you believe that they didn’t take up that option to buy Bendtner after zero goals in nine league appearances.

3) Tyrone Mears to Marseille (2008)
A voyage out to France is not unknown for British and Irish players, but the circumstances of Mears’ move qualify this beyond the fundamental strangeness of the move itself.

Marseille had faxed over an offer of a two-day trial for Mears, prompting him to climb out of the window of the training ground to avoid a potential confrontation with manager Paul Jewell, before collecting his boots and disappearing off over the horizon to meet with Marseille.

As you may have gathered from his Mission Impossible act, Derby – who had just been relegated after that all-time worst Premier League season – hadn’t actually given him permission to attend, describing Marseille’s offer as “completely and utterly unacceptable – in fact it’s laughable”.

Still, it worked: Mears’ sneakiness led to him being fined, Jewell saying he would never play for the club again and Marseille coming back with a better offer and Mears buggering off…though he didn’t actually get a game for another five months and ended up playing just seven times before returning to England to join Burnley.

MORE ON TRANSFERS FROM F365:
👉 Five-year Premier League net spend table has Man Utd in second
👉 Every Premier League transfer from the summer of 2024
👉 The 20 biggest transfers from the summer of 2024

2) Craig Davies to Hellas Verona (2006)
Who? Craig Davies. No, Davies .

Verona boss Massimo Ficcadenti – inventor of a popular brand of dental adhesive – was apparently a big fan of the then-League Two striker, who had scored eight goals in 55 appearances for Oxford United. Alright, so Verona were only a second-tier club at the time, but still…that career path is not well-worn.

It’s hard to imagine how the move came about, but apparently the striker submitted a transfer request on the Monday, took Verona for a drink on Tuesday, they were agreeing terms on Wednesday, and on Thursday, and Friday, and Saturday. He signed on Sunday.

Anyway, Davies made just one appearance for the club, was loaned to Wolves a few months later, and spent the rest of his career forging a textbook journeyman striker career around the EFL.

1) Julien Faubert to Real Madrid (2009)
Julien Faubert, not very good for West Ham. To actual Real Madrid. Still unbeatably nonsensical after all these years.