10 Players You Didn't Know West Ham Almost Signed
2. Andriy Shevchenko
''I was at West Ham and Frank Lampard Snr and I were approached by these two villains who said they were doing some business in the Ukraine, and we were so scared of them we agreed to have a look at a couple of these kids. One of them we played against Barnet Reserves and he scored the winner. They said they wanted a million quid for him, and Frank said it was too much well Im blaming Frank and we let him go. His name was Andriy Shevchenko!" Harry Redknapp, Daily Mail, 2009.
The story has since been rebuffed by the former Ukrainian assassin, but one suspects that was to simply a rouse to protect his fragile ego. Lord knows that English football has battered it enough.
Di Canio and Shevchenko up front for West Ham? If Harrys words are to be believed, then it almost happened. Whatever the truth, Shevchenko signed for Italian giants AC Milan in 1999, before inundating himself as something of a Milanese hero with the winning penalty in the 2003 Champions League final against feisty Italian rivals Juventus. For a period of about five years in the early 00s, Shevchenko was one of the greatest strikers on the planet, and held in the same class as Thierry Henry, Ronaldo and Raul.
The former Champions League medallist will have wished for the West Ham rejection to have been the only blemish on his glistening career instead arriving at Chelsea in 2006 a sluggish, washed-up shell of the player who once struck fear into the hearts of world-class defences.