Players That Were Signed Mainly To Promote Shirt Sales in a Particular Market

[Satchmo Distel]

Talk of "vanity purchase" Alexis Sanchez on the TV thread made me wonder whether the real purpose was to sell shirts in Chile, continuing a trend that probably started with the purchase of Japanese and Korean players (notwithstanding that some of those have been excellent buys).

What have been the most egregious examples?

[Jah Womble]

Beckham in the US?

[Satchmo Distel]

Beckham at Real Madrid, even.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Different sport, but Ayumu Goromaru - who was bought by both Queensland Reds and Toulon to sell shirts in Japan. I think he played about 5 games for each club before returning to play for Yamaha Jubilo

[EIM]

Talk of "vanity purchase" Alexis Sanchez on the TV thread made me wonder whether the real purpose was to sell shirts in Chile, continuing a trend that probably started with the purchase of Japanese and Korean players (notwithstanding that some of those have been excellent buys).

What have been the most egregious examples?

What? The lucrative Chilean shirt market? Are you sure?

Maybe they signed him because he's really good and improves the squad and team?

[Arturo]

Beckham at Real Madrid, even.

Beckham at anywhere really post Old Trafford.

[EIM]

Beckham in LA was selling a league, not shirts.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

no football club has ever prayed for a player to be successful like man utd and Dong Fanzhou. Unfortunately he was not very good at all. You might say kagawa, except that he was a really good player and they were trying to sign lewandowski with him.

[Jah Womble]

Beckham in LA was selling a league, not shirts.

I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive in this instance.

[3 Colours Red]

Arsenal have a bit of form here - Junichi Inamoto, Ryo Miyaichi, Takuma Asano, Park Chu Young.

[Furtho]

I know this sort of thing is received wisdom but have no idea if there’s any evidence for, for instance, Arsenal actually selling shedloads of shirts in Japan off the back of any of those signings.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Sun Jihai at Citeh?

[ursus arctos]

As EIM notes, it is wrong to think of any of these as primarily shirt-selling exercises (as an aside, British supporters tend to have a rather unrealistic idea of how much the club gets from sale of a shirt, which is zero in some cases).

For the club, the deal is more about sponsorship, television contracts, travel, market access and relationships with agents than it is with shirts.

[jwdd27]

Arsenal's handling of Inamoto was slightly suspect, he was brought out for the cameras when they lifted the Premier League trophy in 2002, despite not having made a league appearance, never mind winning a medal.
He did look quarter decent for Japan and Fulham thereafter, so his signing wasn't entirely bogus, just that his profile was rather higher than other reserves, as with Man United's Chinese players.

[Gangster Octopus]

Roy Keane at Celtic.

[N est à?]

Not sure I credit any of these tbh, the amount a fucking footballer costs to run these days, it would be impossible to produce the amount of polyester needed to manufacture the number of shirts you'd need to sell to make a profit.

I mean, I'm sure Shinji Okazaki has helped Leicester's profile in Japan, but he'll have done that by helping them win a premier league title, not just by being Japanese. I doubt it was any skin off Man Utd's nose when Dong Fanzhou didn't work out. They're already way popular in China. And it's the Kingdom of the Snide in any case, no-one makes any money out of merchandise there.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Arsenal's handling of Inamoto was slightly suspect, he was brought out for the cameras when they lifted the Premier League trophy in 2002, despite not having made a league appearance, never mind winning a medal.
He did look quarter decent for Japan and Fulham thereafter, so his signing wasn't entirely bogus, just that his profile was rather higher than other reserves, as with Man United's Chinese players.

Well Inamoto's primary problem wasn't that he wasn't a good player, it's that he wasn't as good as Freddy Ljungberg or robert Pires. There's not much shame in that. It's a similar problem that Kagawa had at man utd. No matter how pissed off ferguson was with Rooney, Rooney was on an entirely different level to kagawa. (I remember a Dutch player back in the day saying that Jordi Cruyff was a very good player, his problem was that he wasn't as good as his father, and more pressingly he wasn't as good as Ryan Giggs, which was a problem shared by virtually every footballer on earth)

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Not sure I credit any of these tbh, the amount a fucking footballer costs to run these days, it would be impossible to produce the amount of polyester needed to manufacture the number of shirts you'd need to sell to make a profit.

I mean, I'm sure Shinji Okazaki has helped Leicester's profile in Japan, but he'll have done that by helping them win a premier league title, not just by being Japanese. I doubt it was any skin off Man Utd's nose when Dong Fanzhou didn't work out. They're already way popular in China. And it's the Kingdom of the Snide in any case, no-one makes any money out of merchandise there.

When Man Utd signed Kagawa, I don't know how many t-shirts they sold in japan, but they did suddenly acquire a whole load of Japanese sponsorship partners.

[Sam]

What? The lucrative Chilean shirt market?

This is almost word for word what I said when it got brought up on the other thread.

The one I most remember this accusation going around for when he was signed was Park Ji-Sung. It struck me as rather racist at the time, given he'd just been fantastic in a team who'd reached the semi-finals of the European Cup, and some outlets (or at least the people who wrote to their letters pages) were talking about him as though he'd been signed straight from a second division South Korean side.

[3 Colours Red]

I don't doubt for a second that Man Utd signed Park for his talent... QPR on the other hand...