Today’s announcement that Sol Campbell has parted company with Notts County means that he will be labeled with one of football's less glamorous legacies. The former England defender only made his debut for the League Two club last weekend, when they succumbed to a 2-1 loss away to Morecombe.
Campbell's performance was a little laboured, understandable considering how much pre-season he has missed, but you have to wonder if it was during these 90 minutes that he made up his mind to leave. Meanwhile for the fans of Notts County it must feel like a slap in the face, especially after all the shock and excitement that greeted Campbell's unveiling at Meadow Lane on August 25th.
I hope that more details will be forthcoming from the player in the next few days and weeks, but I doubt it. He has had a stellar career up until this point, particularly during his five years with Arsenal, but he has also had his well-publicised moments of controversy.
The most obvious of which involved his Bosman transfer from Tottenham to Arsenal in 2001, although of course it only mattered to the fans of Spurs! In the February prior to leaving Arsenal he infamously left the ground after being substituted at half-time of a 3-2 home loss to West Ham. There followed further confusion when Campbell cut himself off from the club for five days before he returned to training.
Despite this, Sol Campbell has always been a consummate professional and an excellent defender. It is to his credit that he achieved further success after Arsenal with Portsmouth, being the club captain in their FA Cup triumph of 2008. His about turn at Notts County though will leave a distasteful flavour in the mouth of many fans.
There are rumours already circulating for the reason that Campbell decided to rip up his £40,000 per week five-year deal. These say that it is down to an ambition to regain a place in the England squad for next summer's World Cup. This is all well and good, but if it is true and not just conjecture, then why did he not realise this before he decided to sign for a club in England's fourth tier!?
More importantly it would appear that Campbell's change of heart won’t lead to South Africa anyway. He will need to produce compelling evidence as to why he left, for the FA to sanction another move for him before the January transfer window. Either way, he will have little time to prove his worth to Fabio Capello, who didn't see fit to pick him when he was still in the Premier League.
On top of that his behaviour towards Notts County won't exactly leave him open to offers, it is highly likely that some managers will be put off by not knowing the extent of Campbell's commitment. Even so, I expect that he will get another move elsewhere and probably back to the Premier League. He may even manufacture a move abroad or to the Championship, but I can guarantee he will have a spare summer come the end of the season.
What is surprising is that Campbell's stay with Notts County is far from the shortest transfer in the history of English football, after all he did at least play a match for them before wondering where he was. Here for your viewing pleasure is a brief run-down on a few of the most short-lived unions in our fair game:
The first such transfer that usually gets mentioned is that of Clive Allen in 1980. At the time he was a highly promising and prolific young goal-scorer for QPR, so it was a massive story when Arsenal made a £1.25m swoop for him that summer. He would never play a competitive game for the Gunners, instead being sold on to Crystal Palace only nine weeks after arriving. Unconfirmed rumours to this day suggest that Arsenal had acted as a go-between for two clubs unwilling to do direct business with each other.
In the summer of 1994, Harry Redknapp's wheeler dealing saw him plump for the talents of Oxford United's Joey Beauchamp. The then West Ham manager splashed out £1.2m on a player who would never play competitively for them. A combination of home-sickness and the commute prompted Beauchamp to ask for a transfer and he ended up at Swindon Town 58 days later. Redknapp had lost the club £400,000 and some of his pride.
One of the shortest and more amusing examples of a transfer gone wrong, is one that could be claimed to have gone right according to Sam Allardyce. In summer 2006 Dietmar Hamann was winding up his Liverpool contract and open to negotiations with a new club. He held talks with Allardyce's Bolton and actually signed a pre-contract agreement with them on June 30th.
There followed an amazingly swift realisation that he would be forced to play in a physical team bereft of style, and he declared that he wanted to move to Manchester City instead. This resulted in Allardyce stubbornly refusing the request, and the deal only went ahead 11 days later when City offered £400,000 in compensation. Big Sam put up a good front, stating that it was "the best transfer deal of my life", getting £400,000 for nothing."
Finally, and so that we can finish on a positive-ish note, there is the case of Mauricio Taricco. The Argentine player had had a fairly successful career in England with Ipswich Town and Tottenham by the time that he was bought by Alan Pardew for West Ham in 2004. Unfortunately Taricco would never have the opportunity to win over his new fans on the pitch, although he would do so by his actions off of it.
His debut came in a Championship game with rivals Millwall, with only 27 minutes of the contest gone, Taricco tore his hamstring and was set for a sustained period on the injury list. As an alternative Taricco offered to tear up his contract with the club and to announce his retirement, thus saving West Ham paying his wages whilst he sat on the sidelines. An act of goodwill that Pardew described as being "one of the most honourable acts I have experienced."
There is no precedent with Sol Campbell then, but he does join one of football's more unusual lists in the bargain. What will be interesting is the reception he gets wherever he decides to take his career next. Let's just hope for Notts County's sake that Sven and their investors are a bit more committed to 'the long-term plan' than their showcase signing has ended up being.