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By Dean Stewart
- 18th September 2003
He’s Had A Shocker... Kawaguchi (Portsmouth)
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Calamitous signings are, thankfully, unavoidable in football so we thought we'd pay tribute to the men that still haunt the memories of their fans now, whilst giving the rest of us permanent rib damage!
Yoshi Kawaguchi - Portsmouth
Yoshi 'Kannotcatchy' Kawaguchi joined Pompey for a club record fee, at the time, of 1.8m. 'He's as big as Beckham in Japan,' they heralded as talk of millions in Japanese shirt sales ‘kerchinged’ in Milan Mandarics ears.
Harry (who was director of football at the time) went to watch him and must of either really wanted the managers job badly or not been able to make Milan hear anything other than 'Kerching' as we promptly signed him.
Kawaguchi arrived in a frenzy of media activity (two Japanese tourists and a reporter) and Graham Rix promptly put him in the reserves to acclimatise him to the English game.
Even then it was clear to all that at 5'10" he was going to struggle, but no 'He's made of rubber' they exclaimed! So after setting the reserves alight, (NOT!) he was finally forced into the first team (Mr Mandaric paid 1.8m and wanted him playing!)
Ten games later and, after a humiliating defeat to Peterborough, the penny finally dropped that he could not catch and back to the reserves he went. At the end of that season Graham Rix was history and Harry (remember he saw him play before we signed him) came in and put him straight on the transfer list, where he stayed all the next season when we won Division 1, as he was determined to prove he could make it and would not leave.
This summer he said he was going to fight Shaka Hislop for the position but then finally realised he was never going to get a game in the reserves, when Pavel Srnicek signed, and hastily signed for Danish side Nordsjaelland.
So, he may not have made any major one-off blunders, but for shear hero to zero status he must be a candidate for the worst signing ever. Oh, and the millions in shirt sales never materialised either.
Yoshi Kannotcatchy... we salute you!
Adi Akinbiyi (Leicester)
Massimo Taibi (Man U)
Nominate your favourite shocker...
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