What happened to the 3 Thai players Shinawatra signed for Man City?

Thaksin Shinawatra took over Manchester City in 2007 targeting “domination of the world game”; signing three unknown Thai players was a strange way of going about it.

We spoke to Sven-Goran Eriksson about the crazy year he spent working under Shinawatra, who eventually stopped speaking to the former England manager, as City started the season brightly but faded away to finish ninth in the Premier League.

One of the odder footnotes of Shinawatra’s ownership came with the signings of three Thai players – Teerasil Dangda, Kiatprawut Saiwaeo and Suree Sukha – who never actually appeared in a competitive game for the club.

In fact, due to the poor ranking of the Thailand national team, none of the players even qualified for a work permit in England.

As Javi Garrido told ITV in 2017: “When that type of person is in charge of a club, they can try to make the players from their own country stronger, and I think that is the reason they signed players from Thailand.”

The only time the trio ever pulled on a City shirt came at the end of 2007-08, when they came off the bench in a post-season friendly against a Thai League All-Stars XI. City were beaten 3-1, with Dangda seeing a goal ruled out.

We’ve taken a closer look at the subsequent careers of those three players to see what became of some of City’s most bizarre signings.

FOTO | Año 2007, los tailandeses Teerasil Dangda, Suree Sukha y Kiatprawut Saiwaew posan con la camiseta del #ManCity pic.twitter.com/yuujY6xALk

— Dᴀɴɪʟᴏ B.A. (@Danilo_FutbolRH) October 27, 2013

Dangda was only 19 when he joined City, having been an unused member of Thailand’s Asian Cup squad that summer, and was sent on loan to Swiss outfit Grasshoppers, where he again failed to make a competitive appearance