WE’VE SEEN that it’s quite hard to move to a club in another league and adapt quickly.
It usually takes a player some time and it is hard to predict how they will handle a new culture, a new challenge. Every player’s personality is slightly different and every player’s circumstances are slightly different.
Marc Overmars had only played in an Ajax 4-3-3 where he did not have to defend, so chasing back to help Nigel Winterburn was a new part of the job for him. But Overmars took that on board and gave Arsenal a phenomenal first season.
Robert Pires is a player who had a fantastic second season, although I liked him from day one and thought he had a decent first season. Pires had never played outside France, just as Overmars had never played outside Holland.
Dennis Bergkamp came from Italy in 1995, lived in a hotel with his pregnant wife, and didn’t score till his seventh game, against Southampton, a fine volley from Glenn Helder’s left wing cross.
Leaving your home country is traumatic and if a player can do it and be successful in another country once, he is more likely do it again in a third country. It’s not such a wrench to leave one foreign country for another foreign country.
After France 98, Marcelo Salas joined Lazio from River Plate but he was not an Argentine. Salas was born in Chile and emigrated to the big city of Buenos Aires and became one of the major stars of South American football. Salas was not leaving home in 1998 any more than Liam Brady was leaving home in 1980 when he joined Juventus.
Jerzy Dudek left Poland and went to Feyonoord and became Footballer of the Year. Not Goalkeeper of the Year, Footballer of the Year. I was excited when there was talk of Dudek joining Arsenal, since Seaman was past it by then, and Dudek had proved he could live abroad and adapt and keep his international place.
For me, Tomas Rosicky was a bit like Dudek, a proven international. He was an exciting teenage talent at Sparta Prague who was sold to Borussia Dortmund in 2001 for £8.5 million, a Bundesliga transfer record.
In May 2006 Rosicky was in Austria with the Czech Republic team, preparing for the World Cup and Czech national coach Karel Bruckner said 70 clubs were interested in him. He had a clause saying he could leave for £6.8 million and Atletico Madrid were in pole position but their bid collapsed when they were unable to pay all the money up front, as Dortmund insisted.
Rosicky, 25, then chose Arsenal. He is a mature, creative player whose dribbles, passes and shots can win games.
To sign Rosicky on May 22, before the World Cup started, was a masterstroke. The player knew where he was going after the World Cup and that helped him to enjoy the tournament, where he scored two terrific goals in his first game against USA.
Then the premature exit by the Czechs, after they lost 2-0 to Ghana and 2-0 to Italy, gave him time for a holiday and a move to England
Borussia Dortmund had won the title in his first season and also reached the Uefa Cup Final, where they lost to 3-2 to Feyonoord in Rotterdam.
But by 2005-2006 Rosicky became disillusioned as the club slumped to seventh in the table and missed out on Europe. He said, “We didn’t play any beautiful football. Sometimes, I would not even see the ball for five minutes. That is why I wanted to leave. I couldn’t motivate myself like I could when I first started with Dortmund.”