£35k striker was first player Bradford City paid money for in years - Bantams will wish they hadn't | OneFootball

When Bradford City paid £35,000 for Willy Topp, he was the first player they'd paid for in six years, but even at this low price he was a mistake.

When Bradford City paid £35,000 for Willy Topp in 2007, it was the first time they'd paid a transfer fee in six years. But even at that low price, the transfer became a saga without a happy ending.

By the summer of 2007, the Premier League years felt a long way away for Bradford City. It was less than a decade since they spent two years in the top-flight, and those two seasons had come at a very heavy cost to the club, with a spell in administration and a further relegation in 2005.

The 2006-07 season didn't bring any let-up for the club. Bradford were relegated to League Two at the end of the season in 22nd place in the table, leading to the appointment of Stuart McCall as their manager as a replacement for Colin Todd, who'd been sacked in February, and David Wetherall, the caretaker who'd succeeded him for the final weeks of the season.

It took a long time to get Topp on the pitch for Bradford in the first place

Chilean striker Willy Topp arrived in Europe in 2007 with the intention of finding a club to play for.

He was signed to the Santiago-based Universidad Católica, but there was interest from Europe. He'd been due to sign for the Belgian club RRFC Montegnée, but he also impressed Stuart McCall in a trial match for Bradford and was offered an opportunity to try himself out in England instead.

Except there was a major complication. Bradford's finances had been so bad that they needed the permission of the Football League to pay any transfer fees, and the upshot of all this was that they hadn't brought a player in for money for six years, with the last being the £100,000 they'd spent to sign Andy Tod from Dunfermline Athletic in 2001.

But there was complication after complication over his arrival at the club. In the first place, Bradford couldn't agree a fee, with the club stating that they'd agreed his wages on the basis that he'd be a free transfer and that they disagreed with the selling club's £55,000 valuation of him.

And then, with a fee finally agreed at £35,000, there were issues over the precise wording of his contract and the international clearance required to get the deal over the line. As the club's joint-chairman Mark Lawn confirmed at the time: "We got international clearance for Willy from the FA and two hours later that was revoked because of the Football League. We're trying to work it out." It took more than two months to get the saga resolved.

Willy Topp failed to have much of an impact at Valley Parade

Willy Topp finally made his debut for Bradford on the 29th December 2007, in a 3-1 away defeat to Hereford United. The result left the Bantams in 16th place in League Two, not the sort of return the club had been expecting, following their relegation at the end of the previous season.

Topp became a semi-regular throughout the second half of the 2007-08 season for Bradford City. He even managed an assist, in their 4-2 win against Shrewsbury Town on his first start for them at the end of January 2008. But that was it. The following season started with an injury which kept him out of the team for a month.

In total, he managed two appearances from the bench that season, a total game-time of 24 minutes. His last appearance came with a seven-minute cameo against Gillingham in October 2008. He was released at the end of November, six months before the end of his contract. In total, he made just 13 appearances for Bradford City, with just that one assist to show for his time at Valley Parade.

Bradford's parlous financial position throughout the 2000s means that £35,000 was an amount of money that they couldn't afford to lose when they signed Willy Topp.

The club haven't got back to the second tier of the game in this country since then, but they have at least got themselves up to the third again for the 2025-26 season.