Every club has a few stories of near miss transfers that could’ve changed the course of their history.
The likes of Arsenal not signing Cristiano Ronaldo, Liverpool missing out on a young Gareth Bale and Manchester United failing to sign Alan Shearer all immediately spring to mind, but there’s one failed transfer in Leeds United’s history that is very interesting to look back on with hindsight.
Speaking on the Say It and Spray It Podcast, Bobby Zamora has now shared how he turned down the chance to join Leeds in January 2004 as he wanted to join West Ham instead.
Zamora rejected Leeds
Zamora shared his story on how he rejected Leeds.
“It was actually transfer deadline day in January, and my agent called me and said that Leeds United wanted to sign me, but then there was also West Ham, and when I heard West Ham I said don’t worry about Leeds, I wasn’t even interested, they were a good side Leeds at the time, West Ham wanted Jermain Defoe and I went the other way, so it worked out well for me in the end,” Zamora said.
What could’ve been
Of course, Bobby Zamora isn’t the biggest name in world football, and this isn’t that crazy of a story, but when you consider the timings around this deal, it is an interesting one to ponder.
This transfer was lined up just six months before Leeds were ultimately relegated from the Premier League, and we can’t help but wonder if Zamora was in the squad at this time if things could’ve turned out differently. After all, he was labelled an ‘amazing’ striker at West Ham.
Leeds only needed to turn a few draws into wins to stay up that season, and while Zamora wasn’t a hugely prolific striker, he did have a knack for scoring big goals in big games, and perhaps that’s what Leeds needed.
Maybe Leeds’ history would look different if they’d signed Zamora at the time.