Liverpool’s wage structure and lack of financial muscle has always been a reason why the club has not been able to sign the big name players. There have been reports of us actually looking to sign players such as Nemanja Vidic before other clubs came calling and Gerard Houllier recently revealed that the wage structure was the reason why we missed out on Cristiano Ronaldo!
The former Liverpool manager was speaking to the Liverpool Echo on how the wage required by Ronaldo was a huge stumbling block and instead we signed Harry Kewell form Leeds United.
“I saw him in the Toulon Under-21 tournament and we went for him,” admitted Houllier.
“But we had a wage scale and we weren’t paying the sort of salary he wanted.
“Then Manchester United played a friendly against Sporting Lisbon and all their boys said to Sir Alex Ferguson: ‘You have to sign him’.
“But I agreed with not breaking the wage structure. I thought it would cause problems in our dressing room.”
It was widely reported earlier that the current Real Madrid star was initially scouted by us and that we were prepared to sign him. But things just don’t seem to go right with our transfer policy and he ended up at Manchester United.
Houllier claimed that signing the four-time Ballon d’Or could have led us to that elusive Premier League crown too.
“Maybe we would have won the title with Ronaldo, but we had Harry Kewell, who was outstanding at the time and was very hungry but got a bad injury.
“After that, he never had the same confidence, the same appetite.”
Ronaldo signed for United for a fee of £12m and was prolific for the Red Devils, scoring 84 goals in 196 games. The Portuguese then joined Real Madrid in 2009 for a fee of £80m, which was a world-record amount at the time.
The Real Madrid man has been on fire after his move to the La Liga giants and has over 600 career goals to his name. Kewell, for all his quality, was never able to make it big at Anfield and even though he won the Champions League in 2005, he had to be taken off due to an injury early on.
Things could have been all so different for us had we signed Ronaldo back then. The Portuguese did struggle in his first season or so but his quality came through and he terrorised defences, including ours, for a number of years.
Phil Thompson also added that after signing a couple of French talents, we could not have gone for Ronaldo at the time.
“We had just signed Florent Sinama Pongolle and Anthony Le Tallec, both on far less than Ronaldo’s aspirations.
“And we would have had anarchy if the other players had found out how much we were considering paying for an 18-year-old kid.
“We looked for a compromise. Ten days later I was sitting in a lounge at Anfield having some lunch and looking at the big TV screen.
“Up came the news United had signed Ronaldo from Lisbon for £12.2m. Gerard and myself nearly choked on our food!”
Our loss certainly turned into United’s gain, and this transfer loss certainly hurts more than others.
