Sol Campbell's move from Tottenham Hotspur to Arsenal was simply the greatest move the Premier League had ever seen. Debate over. Sorry!
Yeah, yeah, it'll be argued. There is nothing unanimous in football. Arguments blossom in the Premier League far more readily than the wonderkids we hype, and it's all amplified by the internet. But this cannot be argued, can it?
Allow yourself, dear reader, to picture the equivalent. After years of fighting for a Premier League title with the Gunners – unsuccessfully – Bukayo Saka decides that he wants a new challenge. He is to leave at the end of his current contract, having told reporters that he'll be departing Blighty, looking for sun, sea, sand and silverware. It's like an ex-girlfriend claiming that she’s emigrating, simply because she loves you so much that she couldn’t bear to run into you doing a big shop.
Only he doesn't. He joins Tottenham for nothing. He wins the Double with Ange Postecoglou, lifting his first Premier League title at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium. How can anyone ever top that!?
And that's just the headline. The story is legendary by now: 23 years to the day, journalists turned up at Arsenal for just a regular transfer scoop, expecting to cover the unveiling of Arsene Wenger's new back-up keeper Richard Wright. They were greeted with the most controversial transfer the Premier League had ever seen.
Wenger smiled and answered questions that day in July 2001, but the deal was orchestrated by David Dein, Arsenal’s then-vice chairman and unofficial Director of Football. Dein was quite the behind-the-scenes figure; one of the early voices proposing a Premier League to turn a waning sport into a multi-million-pound enterprise at the end of the 1980s, he was revered not just at Highbury, but respected throughout the football world.
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And in the end, Tottenham never sold Campbell to Arsenal. It was David Dein who sold Arsenal to Campbell, as the pair would take walks around Dein’s garden in the football-less, summer evenings – remember those? – discussing the Gunners’ project, far away from the media’s watchful eyes. The idea was clear from Arsenal’s end: Campbell was experienced, athletic and a born leader. He was the perfect heir to Tony Adams’s throne, and he was the missing piece in a side that had finished as Sir Alex Ferguson’s bridesmaid for three years on the trot.
Campbell bought into the idea immediately. He’s since told of how on his return to White Hart Lane, he went to warm up in every corner of the cauldron to get a glimpse of what he’d be in for during that match. That he even considered putting himself through the burning, red-hot hate that Spurs fans launched at him, shows just the strength of his character. It's that mentality that Arsenal built on in the years that followed.
The Double came, then an FA Cup, and then the hallowed unbeaten campaign of 2003/04 – winning another FA Cup in 2005 followed before Campbell scored a Champions League final goal in 2006 – which ultimately proved pointless.
Who could argue that he’d made the wrong decision? Sol Campbell won a title at White Hart Lane – something he’d have dreamed of doing for years. Only he did it with Tottenham’s bitter rivals, before partying with Thierry Henry and Co. on the patch of grass he used to call his own.
In the two decades since Tottenham’s captain swapped sides in North London, we’ve seen all kinds of signings. Statements of intent, bargains, big investments and the odd swap deal, as agents tower like skyscrapers over what used to be a modest sport.
Sergio Aguero has become the silver-haired, enduring icon of a movement at Manchester City. Likewise, Manchester United invested £12m in a toothy Portuguese show pony – who transformed into the artist now recognised as Cristiano Ronaldo – before they made a healthy £70m profit on his services. Virgil van Dijk healed 30 years of hurt at Liverpool: so much so that such an outrageous fee for the time now looks like a bargain compared with Chelsea's slapdash cash-splashing.
But that doesn’t make them the greatest Premier League transfers ever. Any owner can exchange a briefcase of cash, Paypal details or a Comic Relief-style cheque. And sure, Frank Lampard, Jay-Jay Okocha, Petr Cech and Mohamed Salah can all claim to be solid pieces of business – but none quite match Sol Campell’s. Simply on an emotional level, it’s hard to see it ever beaten.
No one has ever signed their greatest rival’s best player for nothing, turned them into the fulcrum of their side, won their biggest trophy in said rivals’ back garden and written their name into the club’s most enduring period of football ever.
We will likely argue about football forever. Until the next pandemic, and beyond, until the European Super League washes us all away. But this debate is clear. There has never been a better Premier League signing than Sol Campbell at Arsenal. There just hasn’t.
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