Southampton FC were burned in record-breaking deal - Mauricio Pochettino admitted ‘big mistake’ | OneFootball

Southampton's transformation under Mauricio Pochettino was startling, but this didn't mean that they got every transfer decision under him right.

Southampton's decision to take a chance on Mauricio Pochettino was a gamble that transformed the club, but not every transfer decision they made during his 16 months at St Mary's was a success.

When Southampton sacked Nigel Adkins and replaced him with Mauricio Pochettino in January 2013, they were taking a bit of a gamble. Pochettino had no experience of the game in this country and needed an interpreter throughout his first few months at St Mary's.

The gamble worked. Over a season and a half with the club, the new head coach stabilised his team in the Premier League and then took them to their highest league position in a decade, before moving on to Tottenham Hotspur in May 2014 with the groundwork having been put in place for the Saints to flourish for several more seasons.

But every new signing is also a gamble for a club, and even though Southampton experienced a dramatic upturn in their fortunes throughout his stay with the club, not every signing they made turned out to be a success. Indeed, in the case of the Italian-Argentinian striker Dani Osvaldo, the decision to spend a club-record fee of almost £13 million on the striker turned out to be quite the dud.

Dani Osvaldo's hair-trigger temper had been evident before Southampton signed him

There was method behind the decision-making which led to Dani Osvaldo turning up at Southampton in the first place. He had worked with Pochettino before at Espanyol, and his previous two seasons in Serie A with Roma had delivered 27 goals in 55 League appearances.

But the potential for flashpoints were already visible. He was also suspended by Roma in 2011 for punching team-mate Erik Lamela during a 2-0 defeat by Udinese. And this wasn't a one-off. When Roma played arch-rivals Lazio in the 2013 Coppa Italia final, Osvaldo was only brought on for the last 15 minutes of the match.

Lazio won the game 1-0, and Osvaldo was so incensed by his lack of game time that he skipped the awards ceremony afterwards and later took to the social media platform Twitter, berating the Roma head coach Aurelio Andreazzoli, as he had also done during the match.

This outburst cost Osvaldo his place in the Italy national team squad for that summer's Confederations Cup in Brazil, but it wasn't enough to prevent his move to the Premier League, and on the 18th August 2013 he signed for Southampton on a four-year contract for a fee which was reported to be £15 million.

Osvaldo's temperament would cause him issues throughout a truncated career

By the start of the following year, though, Osvaldo's temperament was again causing problems that couldn't be overlooked. On the 3rd January 2014, an FA independent regulatory commission found him guilty of violent conduct and fined him £40,000 over his involvement in a touchline fracas during a match against Newcastle United.

But worse was to follow less than three weeks after the FA's sanction, when Southampton had to suspend him over a training ground fight with team-mate Jose Fonte, which reportedly resulted in Fonte receiving a black eye and a broken nose. The club released a statement in which they said: "The club has taken swift and proper action for what it considers a breach of the conduct expected of its players."

This turned out to effectively be the end Osvaldo's time at Southampton. He was loaned out to Juventus for the second half of the 2013-14 season, and when Pochettino left St Mary's for Spurs at the end of 2013-14, his pre-existing connection to the Saints was severed.

He spent the first half of the 2014-15 season on loan at Inter, but again his temperament got in the way of a permanent deal. In January 2015, the club suspended him after he failed to turn up for training for two days, a couple of weeks after being informally dropped over picking a fight with team-mate Mauro Icardi during a match against Juventus.

The following month he returned to St Mary's to be loaned out again, this time returning to Argentina to play for Boca Juniors. At the end of the 2014-15 season, Southampton terminated his contract. In total, Dani Osvaldo made 13 League appearances for Southampton, scoring three goals. Not much of a return on almost £13 million.

Dani Osvaldo went on to have spells with Porto and for a second time with Boca Juniors, but had his Boca contract terminated at the end of the 2015-16 season after getting caught smoking in the changing room at La Bombonera. He retired from playing that summer, although he did have a brief spell back in the game in Argentina with Banfield in 2020.

Speaking at the start of 2016, Mauricio Pochettino admitted that signing Osvaldo had been an error of judgement: 'Looking back, it was a mistake. Osvaldo recognised it was a big mistake for him to come and for us to sign him", he said, "You know the problems, what happened with Jose Fonte."

Pochettino said of the Fonte incident: "We took the decision to pull him out of the changing room because I have to have discipline. His behaviour was unacceptable and for that we were very strong with him", and added that, "The problem is if you bring in a player who is normal but not a good guy. For what? We don't want to bring in players for the sake of it. They have to have the right profile."

At the time of his departure from St Mary's, TNT Sport asked, "How did Southampton fail to spot Osvaldo's history of violence?" It seems a fair question to ask, and it is clear that temperamental issues hampered the player's career. Southampton, meanwhile, were left to count the huge financial cost of signing a player whose volatility had a limiting effect on what he could achieve on the pitch.