Top 10 veteran signings features Chelsea trio and Spurs, Liverpool cult heroes | OneFootball

Chelsea have three players in the top five Premier League signings over the age of 30 – and it could have been more.

Thiago Silva and Gianluca Vialli can consider themselves unfortunate not to make the top 10 veteran signings as Chelsea rediscover their appetite for an oldie.

The criteria here: Premier League era; 30 or over when they signed; and outfield players only.

10) Attilio Lombardo (Crystal Palace)

The summer of 1997 saw Italy international Lombardo swap Juventus, with whom he’d just won the Serie A title, for Palace, who’d just won the play-offs to get back in the Premier League.

“He’s a top international player who is very flexible and will give us that little bit of class, that little bit of guile, we may have been missing,” said manager Steve Coppell, unveiling Lombardo a week before the start of the season which opened with the 31-year-old scoring on his debut in a win at Everton.

That was a sign of things to come for Lombardo, if not Palace. The new boy became a cult hero among fans and team-mates, who recognised they were barely worthy of sharing the same pitch. Even with Lombardo, though, Palace struggled.

In March, Coppell moved upstairs, making way for Lombardo to take over as manager, assisted by Thomas Brolin. The Italian failed to save Palace from the drop, but so enamoured was he by the Eagles, he stuck around for half a season in the second tier too.

9) Gary McAllister (Liverpool)

Gerard Houllier had to win over a sceptical fanbase, dressing room and assistant manager when he moved for 35-year-old McAllister when the midfielder’s Coventry contract expired in 2000.

Houllier’s right-hand man Phil Thompson thought signing the veteran “sent the wrong message”, while Steven Gerrard was fuming.

‘How wrong I was,’ wrote Gerrard in his autobiography. ‘Meeting this intelligent Scot was an important moment in my career. As a midfielder and a man, Gary Mac was special.’

That was evident in two seasons at Anfield in which he served as the young team’s elder statesman, bringing class and composure to Houllier’s midfield, helping the Reds to a treble and the Champions League.

8) Granit Xhaka (Sunderland)

Many of the players on this list played in an era when footballers weren’t condemned to the knacker’s yard on their 30th birthday. But Xhaka is furthering the modern-day veterans’ cause having been last term’s signing of the season.

“He’s the most influential signing in the North East since Kevin Keegan at Newcastle in 1982,” North East scribe Ian Murtagh told the BBC and he’s not exaggerating. Xhaka not only pulled the Sunderland strings on the pitch but also set the example off it for the 427 other new arrivals last season.

Xhaka, 32 when he signed, was more influential than any other player in helping Sunderland not only defy expectations of relegation but secure European football for the first time in more than half a century. So much so, he was the first veteran Chelsea wanted to sign this summer. Just not enough to make a bid worth considering.

7) Teddy Sheringham (Manchester United)

A few eyebrows were raised when Manchester United moved to replace the retiring Eric Cantona, 30, with Sheringham, 31, in the summer of 2007. And the doubters looked for a while to have been right.

Sheringham started slowly at Old Trafford. In his first season, as he was reminded at away grounds across the country, he won f*** all. His second campaign didn’t seem to be going much better up until the England striker helped United win the lot.

Even after that, in his third season, Sheringham’s opportunities were limited as Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole formed one of the game’s most lethal strike partnerships. But in 2000/01, aged 35, Sheringham saved his best season for last, proving pivotal in a third consecutive league title, top-scoring while winning the FWA and PFA Player of the Year awards.

6) Youri Djorkaeff (Bolton)

Back in 2003, Sam Allardyce was viewed as a visionary. The Bolton manager, together with his staff, took the Trotters from the Championship to Europe while recruiting World Cup winners and Champions League stars to play alongside less-heralded names like Mike Whitlow, Anthony Barness and Simon Charlton.

Djorkaeff, approaching 34, was the first star name through the door at The Reebok. While Bolton were yo-yoing between divisions with a squad similar to that which earned promotion through the play-offs in 2001, Allardyce met the France star for dinner and pints of wine in Germany, where he was in the midst of an unhappy spell with Kaiserslautern. Big Sam sold Djorkaeff on the idea of half a season in Lancashire, scrapping at the foot of the Premier League.

When the former Inter and PSG star helped Bolton survive, Djorkaeff committed for two more years, prompting other big names like Jay-Jay Okocha, Ivan Campo, Fernando Hierro and Nicolas Anelka to follow in his footsteps. But Djokaeff was the one who got the Bolton ball rolling.

5) Claude Makelele (Chelsea)

“We will not miss Makelele,” said Florentino Perez when he sold 30-year-old Makelele to a Chelsea recently bought by Roman Abramovich. “His technique is average, he lacks the speed and skill to take the ball past opponents, and 90% of his distribution either goes backwards or sideways. He wasn’t a header of the ball and he rarely passed the ball more than three metres. Younger players will arrive who will cause Makelele to be forgotten.”

It was hardly the first or last of Perez’s bad takes, but nor was it a coincidence that in the five seasons Makelele played for Chelsea, they won two Premier League titles, an FA Cup and two League Cups, while Real Madrid won nothing.

The France midfielder was first the “battery” in Claudio Ranieri’s Chelsea before becoming the most important player in Jose Mourinho’s all-conquering Blues team while mastering his position to the extent it was named after him.

4) Paolo Di Canio (West Ham)

”You will all have your opinions,” said Harry Redknapp in response to criticism for signing Di Canio for West Ham in January 1999. ”But in the end I’ll be right.”

He was. Di Canio was a bold signing given his checkered past. He hadn’t played since an 11-game ban for shoving a referee and was sold by Sheffield Wednesday while AWOL. Redknapp had to convince his own chairman that it wasn’t a terrible idea.

Di Canio repaid Redknapp’s faith in spades over four and half seasons in east London. The Italian hot-head became a hero at Upton Park – especially so when he turned down Manchester United in 2002-02.

3) Ruud Gullit (Chelsea)

Some may have thought the Ballon d’Or winner was coming for the money when he signed for mid-table Chelsea from AC Milan shortly before his 33rd birthday. But Gullit changed Chelsea and the Premier League too.

The Netherlands star was recruited by Glenn Hoddle initially to play as a sweeper, despite his success as an attacking midfielder in Milan. But his class confused team-mates as well as opponents.

“It was like watching an 18-year-old play among 12-year-olds,” said Hoddle, who moved Gullit into midfield after watching his other Chelsea players struggle to keep up. Gullit finished the 1995-96 season as player of the season runner-up to Eric Cantona before replacing Hoddle as player-manager, ending their 26-year trophy drought in his first season in charge. He also signed two other players on this list.

2) Jurgen Klinsmann (Tottenham Hotspur)

Klinsmann was three weeks into his 30s when he signed for Spurs aboard Alan Sugar’s Monaco-moored yacht. Sugar paid £2million for “one of the best players in the world” as manager Ossie Ardiles described the Germany striker, who had just scored five goals at the 1994 World Cup.

Klinsmann proved the manager right with 30 goals in all competitions – Ardiles only saw 12 before he was sacked – including 20 in the Premier League, the first of which was followed by a self-deprecating dive at Hillsborough which became one of the Premier League’s most iconic celebrations.

The German ended the only season of his first Spurs spell – he returned in 1997/98 – as the first player ever to win the FWA Player of the Year in his first season in England, was selected in the PFA Team of the Year and ended 1995 as the Ballon d’Or runner-up.

1) Gianfranco Zola (Chelsea)

Chelsea’s greatest ever player?

Zola was 30 when he signed from Parma in November 1996. Despite missing the first three months of the season and it being assumed the tiny technician would take time to acclimatise to the Premier League, the Italian still won the 1997 FWA Player of the Year award.

And he maintained those ridiculously high standards for another six seasons, scoring 80 goals in 312 appearances while helping to transform Chelsea from mid-table also-rans to a club regularly competing for the domestic and European honours.

Zola’s impact went way beyond silverware and stats. He was adored at the Bridge and admired far beyond for making the game as fun to watch as he had playing it.