Roberto Carlos, Gheorghe Hagi and the other Everton transfers they couldn't quite pull off

Brazil legend Roberto Carlos has become the latest big name to claim he was an Everton transfer near-miss back in the 1990s.

The thunder-thighed full-back who went on to win 125 caps for his country, lift the World Cup in 2002 and secure a hat-trick of Champions Leagues with Real Madrid at club level in over a decade as one of their 'Galacticos' at the Bernabeu, reckons the Blues wanted him shortly after their FA Cup win in 1995, having netted in front of the Gwladys Street when playing in a 3-0 win over Japan at Goodison Park.

With seven managers since 2016 and now a third director of football, Everton's recruitment in recent times has come under scrutiny as a squad widely reported to having the largest wage bill in the Premier League battled to stay in the division last season. International recruitment is common place now but a generation ago, before widespread global scouting and easy to access digital footage, casting your net overseas was often a precarious business.

The 1990s were a ‘golden era’, if you could call it that, for audacious Everton transfer pursuits of foreign players that didn’t quite come off. Those of you who watched last year’s BBC documentary series Fever Pitch! The Rise of the Premier League will recall how it was a time of change both on and off the pitch in the upper echelons of English football.

While the Blues had long been one of the game’s powerhouses, known as the ‘Mersey Millionaires’ during John Moores’ ownership of the club, had enjoyed their most-successful era in the previous decade of the 1980s, and were one of the lead players in the creation of the Premier League under Sir Philip Carter, they struggled to keep up with the game’s elite as the 20th century drew to a close.

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