Certain football supporters love nothing more than their club splashing out huge sums of money on signing a new player.
But there’s also a lot to be said for unearthing a gem in a cut price deal before anyone has any real clue about who they are.
Liverpool pulled off just such a masterstroke 22 years ago today, when they signed the largely unknown Sami Hyypia from Dutch side Willem II for £2.5 million.
A transfer fee of that size was obviously larger then than it would be now, but it was not a huge amount for a centre-back even at that time.
In the summer of 1999, Newcastle United signed a pair of central defenders. The Magpies acquired Marcelino for £5.8 million from Mallorca, while they gave Paris Saint-Germain £4.7m in exchange for Alain Goma.
Manchester United bought Mikael Silvestre for £4 million, and Michael Duberry moved north from Chelsea to Leeds for £4.5 million.
Silvestre was certainly a success, winning four league titles, but the others didn’t achieve a great deal. Duberry made 53 Premier League appearances during his five seasons in Yorkshire, and the Newcastle pair only mustered 50 between them.
Hyypia’s impact was immediate. Liverpool had struggled defensively throughout the 1990s and had conceded 49 goals in the season prior to his arrival.
Along with fellow new centre-back signing Stephane Henchoz – who cost £3.5 million from Blackburn Rovers – the Finn ensured the Reds only conceded 30 league goals in his debut campaign on Merseyside.
It went a long way to helping them qualify for the UEFA Cup, which formed part of the club’s unforgettable treble of cup wins the following season.
Hyypia remained with the club until 2009, winning the Champions League in 2005 and the FA Cup the following season.
His final start for the club came as a late addition to the side, after Alvaro Arbeloa injured his hamstring in the warm up. The match in question? An incredible 4-1 victory at Old Trafford which kept the Reds’ hopes of winning the title in 2008/09 alive.
In total, Hyypia made 464 appearances for Liverpool, which currently sees him sitting 20 th in the club’s all-time list ( per LFC History ). He scored 35 goals, including netting in three Champions League quarter-finals, and won six major honours with the Reds.
What are your favourite Hyypia memories? Let us know in the comments.
To have got so much out of a player who cost so little was an incredible piece of business. Fans would be demanding the club build a statue of Michael Edwards if he were able to complete a similar deal these days.
Yet the Hyypia signing was done in a much simpler time, before advanced statistical analysis played any part in the scouting of players.
The opinion of an army of scouts was all clubs really had to go on, and even then, how did they know who to check out? There was no data to use as a shortcut and filtering tool to pinpoint the players who were stronger than others in particular areas.
Fortunately for the Liverpool hierarchy of the late-1990s, they got a helping hand in spotting Hyypia from a television cameraman. Former chief executive Peter Robinson later explained how this came to pass, on LFC History.
“It was mid-way through the 1998-99 season when there was a knock on the door of my office at Anfield. I had never met the chap. He came in and introduced himself as a cameraman who covered football in Europe.
“He knew we were looking for a strong defender and recommended we take a look at Sami, who was playing for Willem, one of the smaller Dutch clubs. That is how it all started.
“I passed the message on to Gerard [Houllier] and, over the next few months, members of the staff went to Holland to watch him on several occasions,” he said.
But the Reds faced competition, and other teams were not convinced of the player’s suitability for the Premier League. How wrong they were.
“We knew Sunderland were also interested but there was a general perception that because of his size, Sami might be too slow for English football. That was not the opinion formed by our backroom staff," Robinson continued.
“Ron Yeats, Phil Thompson, the late Tom Saunders and Patrice Bergues all thought he was the player we were looking for and, when Gerard confirmed that, we opened talks to bring him to Anfield."
Perhaps the transfer team at Sunderland should’ve paid more attention to some cameramen that summer? Liverpool can be thankful that they didn’t, as 22 years ago today they were able to sign one of the club’s greatest ever servants thanks to a very unusual tip off.
