Loadsamoney XI: Jordan Henderson set to join Oscar, Tevez in following the cash | OneFootball

Jordan Henderson could be about to follow Oscar and Garry O'Connor by chasing the money.

It’s about to rain riyals for one-time LBGT+ ally Jordan Henderson. The Liverpool skipper will go straight into this XI who followed the money to Qatar, Russia, China, Goodison…

GK: Edouard Mendy It’s hard to think of many No.1s who followed the money. Goalkeepers may be mad but they are obviously a principled bunch. That or they don’t make ideal playthings for super-rich clubs desperate to showcase their wealth.

But they still need keepers even in Saudi, and Mendy was the first big-name stopper to head there after the trolley dash really got going.

Mendy was refusing a new deal at Chelsea and he’d lost his place anyway. He wasn’t paid as much as Kepa – the keeper he was signed to replace – and though he’s not on one of the most lavish contracts on offer in Saudi, he’s still taking home almost £100,000 a week more than he was pocketing at Stamford Bridge.

CB: Toby Alderweireld Who else had forgotten that Alderweireld moved to Qatar?

The Belgian left Spurs for Al-Duhail in 2021, when he explained that he did so in order to spend more time with his family. Perhaps he got sick of them because after a year of trousering the riyal, he was heading back to Belgium. Which worked out rather well…

CB: Chris Samba The defender established himself as one of the Premier League’s best centre-backs under Sam Allardyce and Mark Hughes at Blackburn. He was linked with Arsenal but Anzhi Makhachkala were in the midst of their spending spree and Samba moved to Russia for £12.5million to collect a £100,000-a-week salary.

Less than a year later, after experiencing racism in Russia, Samba returned to the Premier League with QPR. “There he will earn almost as much as he did here,” said Anzhi director German Tkachenko. “In my view, QPR have lost their minds. When they agreed to pay his release fee, we wept.”

Yet Anzhi bought Samba back six months later when QPR were relegated. The defender lasted two months before ‘financial restructuring’ saw their entire squad transfer-listed.

LB: Roberto Carlos The former Brazil star moved to Anzhi aged 37 after having his Corinthians contract cancelled. For his next birthday, Anzhi’s billionaire owner Suleyman Kerimov bought Carlos a Bugatti Veyron, a car worth around £1million. Three years later that caused Manchester City all sorts of grief.

Because when all Yaya Toure got his birthday – three years later – was a cake, his agent Dimitry Seluk was most upset.

“He got a cake, but when it was Roberto Carlos’s birthday, the president of Anzhi gave him a Bugatti.

“I don’t expect City to present Yaya with a Bugatti, we only asked that they shook his hand and said ‘we congratulate you’. It is the minimum they must do when it is his birthday and the squad is all together.”

Anyway, back to Bobberto Carlos. He lasted 18 months at Anzhi before retiring at the club.

RB: Yannick Carrasco You couldn’t blame the Belgium wideman for having second thoughts after his Dalian Yifang debut. Having just signed for £27million from Atletico Madrid, Carrasco and his new team-mates were battered 8-0 in his first taste of CSL.

He spent two seasons going through the motions in China before returning to Atletico, initially on loan, before signing for four more years at the Wanda Metropolitano.

MF: Axel Witsel “No European club would be able to match the offer I got from China. It was hard to refuse,” said Witsel after joining Tianjin Quanjian aged 27.

“I signed for three years and I was thinking in my head, ‘OK, I will do three years in China and then I will come back to Europe.’ But in the end I stayed just a year and a half.”

Eventually, after spells at Standard Liege, Benfica, Zenit and Tianjin Quanjian, Witsel got to test himself in one of Europe’s big leagues when Borussia Dortmund brought him back from China. But Witsel’s world tour was never held against him by any of the Belgium managers during his 15-year, 130-cap international career.

MF: Oscar Neither Chelsea nor Oscar could likely believe their ears in 2016 when Shanghai Shenhua offered to give the Blues £52million while paying the Brazilian £400,000 a week.

During his initial four-year contract, Oscar will have earned enough to buy Raphael Varane and Ibrahima Konate. With change to spare. The Chinese authorities quickly clamped down on such huge deals but Oscar still renewed his contract through to 2024.

MF: Alex Teixeira Before Oscar, the Asian transfer record was set by Jiangsu Suning when they paid £38million for Teixeira.

The then 26-year-old seemed set for Liverpool, who were haggling over a £24million fee with Shakhtar Donetsk. Then along came the CSL club to blow the Reds out of the water.

“Let’s put it like this: everyone always knew that I wanted to stay in Europe and move to the English Premier League club,” Teixeira said shortly after. “But, unfortunately, all the proposals that came from them, were somewhat windy and did not contain anything concrete. Now I have received a serious offer from China.”

FWD: Tomasz Radzinski Radzinski didn’t bother to hide his reasons for leaving Anderlecht in 2001.

Radzinski repaid the Toffees with 25 goals in 91 appearances before demanding a transfer, something which he apologised for years later. “I had really fantastic years at Everton and the way it ended I wish it would have happened differently.”

FWD: Neymar Let’s not pretend players don’t move within Europe for the moolah. After all, everyone wants to get paid gazillions.

Which is exactly what Neymar got when he moved to PSG in a world-record deal in 2017. PSG gave Barca £198million before committing to paying the Brazilian around £537,000 every week for four years.

Neymar spent much of that time angling for a move back to Barcelona, before he realised they were on the bones of their arse. So, instead, he’s re-signed for PSG on the same terms that literally no one else in Europe would offer him. Which PSG now regret.

FWD: Garry O’Connor Tony Mowbray, then Hibs manager, said the terms on offer from Lokomotiv Moscow in 2006 were “life-changing for Garry and his family”. O’Connor wasn’t coy about it…

“I can set my family up for life,” he said at the time. “If I was single and never had my fiancee or son I maybe would not have made the move to Russia.”

Fair enough. And O’Connor wasn’t hoovering up all the money; he donated his part of the transfer fee to Hibs to improve their training facilities. The striker lasted a year and a half in Russia, scoring the winning goal in the Russian Cup final, before returning to Britain with Birmingham.

FWD: Carlos Tevez Tevez hardly needed the money but he took it regardless when Shanghai Shenhua were willing to make him one of the world’s highest-paid players.

The Argentina striker lasted a year in China before returning again to Boca Juniors. “It’s fine because I was on vacation for seven months,” he said upon leaving. “When I landed in China, I wanted to return to Boca.”

Diego Maradona was fully on board with Tevez’s plan: “It’s perfect. He filled Santa’s sack with dollars and now he has returned to Boca.”