West Brom and Celtic FC made same transfer mistake | OneFootball

Cristian Gamboa was a star at the 2014 World Cup finals, but he couldn't recreate his international form in England or Scotland.

Cristian Gamboa was part of a Costa Rica team that caused tremors at the 2014 World Cup, but his attempts to settle in both England and Scotland fell flat.

The 2014 World Cup finals provided a few surprises, but none were more surprising than the progress of Costa Rica. In a group with England, Italy and Uruguay, they'd been widely tipped to finish bottom of the group, but instead picked up two wins and a draw and then beat Greece on penalties in the Round of 16 before only losing on penalties to the Netherlands in the quarter-finals, following a goalless draw.

Costa Rica only conceded two goals from open play in their five matches, and Cristian Gamboa was their right-back throughout this run, so it was unsurprising that he attracted interest from abroad. But following the 2014 World Cup Gamboa spent five years in England and Scotland trying to make it work but was unable to do so, and in the end two different clubs ended up regretting having made the decision to take a chance on him.

Visa issues almost prevented West Brom's move for Cristian Gamboa from happening in the first place

By the summer of 2014, West Bromwich Albion had been a Premier League club for four years, but while they'd become a reasonably well-established top-flight club, the 2013-14 season had only seen them avoid relegation by three points. After three successive mid-table finishes, it was clear that there was work to do on their first-team squad in the summer of 2014.

Gamboa had started his career in Europe in Norway with Fredrikstad before moving on to FC Copenhagen, but it was back in Norway with Rosenborg where he found his feet, signing for them permanently on a five-year contract in 2013.

Albion were almost unable to make the transfer happen at all. Having agreed a £2 million fee for the player, there were issues with getting him a work permit on the basis of the number of times that he'd played for Costa Rica, even though he'd just starred for them at a World Cup. Eventually, though, they got it sorted and Gamboa signed a three-year contract with West Brom at the start of August.

Gamboa couldn't make it work at Celtic after West Brom exit

With the benefit of hindsight, Albion may have ended up wishing that the visa issues with Gamboa had proved insurmountable. He didn't get his first start for them until the start of October, and when manager Alan Irvine was sacked and replaced by Tony Pulis in December 2014, he only fell further out of favour.

He played just one minute of competitive football for West Bromwich Albion throughout the second half of the 2014-15, and in March 2015 he made the claim that, at 5'9" tall, he was too short for Pulis. But with Albion finishing the 2014-15 season 13th in the Premier League, though, Pulius wasn't going anywhere and Gamboa remained sidelined.

He played just 27 minutes of Premier League football throughout the 2015-16 season, and by the end of that second season at The Hawthorns it was clear that this move hadn't worked out and that he needed to move on. Celtic stepped in at the end of the summer 2016 transfer window and offered him a transfer north of the border.

The 2016-17 season was a hugely successful one for Celtic, who won the SPFL without losing a single game and beat Rangers three times out of four, including two 5-1 wins, into the bargain. Gamboa featured 17 times for them in the League, with 12 of those appearances being starts. His team won the league again the following season, but this brought just two League appearances, and August 2019 he moved on again, this time to Bochum, in Germany.

Cristan Gamboa had a successful career. He retired at the end of the 2024-25 season, having played six years for Bochum, where he was in their 2021 2. Bundesliga-winning team. He was in Costa Rica's squad for the 2018 World Cup and played in the Copa America for them as well. In total, he made 78 appearances for his country.

But he never quite fitted, either in England or in Scotland, and as he reflects on his career post-retirement, it might just be the case that, having lost five years of his playing career to just 48 appearances in total both north and south of the border, Gamboa himself may just regret having made those switches himself.