The 10 weirdest transfer announcement videos - including Man Utd, Chelsea, and Crystal Palace deals

Earlier in the week, we were treated/subjected to one of the most unhinged transfer announcement videos of all-time. Al-Ittihad’s post unveiling the arrival of former Celtic winger Jota in a £25 million deal was an AI-generated nightmare, brimming with unsettling imagery and lacking in any kind of reason or context.

Still, it is far from alone in the world of bonkers announcement clips, and with that in mind, we’ve taken a look at 10 more of the most weird and wonderful below...

Alexis Sanchez - Manchester United

Let’s start with a classic of the genre. When Manchester United eventually fended off all kinds of competition to sign Alexis Sanchez from Arsenal, there was, of course, only one option for how to announce the news to their fanbase... whack him in front of a baby grand in a full kit and force him to hammer out Glory, Glory Man United like an eight-year-old at their first piano recital. Apparently. Awkward, cringe-inducing, and iconic in equal measure.

Ricardo Quaresma - Vitoria Guimaraes

How do you even begin to go about unveiling one of the most mercurial talents of his generation? Well, according to the media team at Vitoria Guimaraes, you take him to a castle, hire somebody to play his butler, and pretend that he is quite literally a member of the landed gentry. Still not unhinged enough for you? How about a parting shot in which Quaresma refuses the keys to a low-slung super car, and instead rides out of the keep on a white stallion? Satisfied? Good.

Aaron Hickey - Bologna

Somebody at Bologna evidently googled ‘Scottish things’ and just ran with the first result they came across. Hickey’s announcement video involves a shoddy green screen representation of Loch Ness, a plastic dinosaur, and the kind of bagpipe score that would perhaps convince you to commit heinous acts if you were subjected to it for any longer than the 39-second run time of this clip. The whole thing ends with the Glasgow native cradling aforementioned Jurassic creature while assuring supporters, ‘Believe me, I’m real’. Also, he is wearing a vest.

Antonio Rudiger - Chelsea

Some of the worst acting you are ever likely to see from anybody in any format, and as a consequence, genuinely toe-curling stuff. The premise is simple enough; father and son walk into a Chelsea club shop, son asks for the name ‘Rudiger’ across the back of his new shirt, father tells son that he can’t have it because the German defender hasn’t actually signed yet. A shop assistant then vows to see what she can do, before proceeding to check the storeroom, where Rudiger is waiting to assure her that it is absolutely fine by him because he is, it turns out, a Chelsea player now after all. Quite why the Blues felt it was appropriate to keep their new multi-million pound signing in what essentially appears to be a glorified broom cupboard is never explained to us, the petrified audience.

Patrik Schick - AS Roma

Here is a chronological list of things that appeared in AS Roma’s announcemount video for the signing of Czech centre-forward Patrik Schick back in 2017: a monkey hammering away at the keyboard of a laptop computer, a crooning lion, some TV static, Francesco Totti, Katy Perry in a pair of 3D glasses, the crooning lion again, and finally, a goat in a tuxedo playing chess. Your guess is as good as ours.

Frank de Boer - Crystal Palace

Quite literally 35 uninterrupted seconds of white smoke billowing from the chimney of a chicken shop. Imagine Colonel Sanders being selected as the next Pope and you’re on the right tracks. Then again, that’s an appointment that probably would have made more sense that Palace’s doomed dalliance with De Boer.

Wout Weghorst - Burnley

Burnley are garnering quite the reputation for their announcement videos, but this effort involving Wout Weghorst from last January is a real creative zenith. Borrowing footage from Steven Spielberg’s 1993 stark warning against the dangers of inadequate fencing, Jurassic Park, the Clarets interspersed clips of their towering new Dutchman to make it look like he, and not a bunch of escaped dinosaurs, was terrorising Isla Nublar. In hindsight, Burnley probably would have been better off signing an actual diplodocus and playing that up top.

Santi Cazorla - Villarreal

Technically not a video, but still very impressive nonetheless. To unveil Santi Cazorla in 2018, perennial overachievers Villarreal hired a magician, who promptly conjured the diminuitive midfielder in a plume of smoke right on the halfway line of their home stadium. It sounds cheap and tacky, and maybe it would be if it weren’t so damn confounding. I’ve watched the clip about 40 times and I genuinely still have zero ideas on how the trick is done.

Kwaku Oduroh - Rochdale

A new challenger enters the fray... Anything that references (the best British sitcom of all-time) Phoenix Nights is alright by me, and this recent video from Rochdale, co-opting and repurposing the infamous Sammy the Snake bouncy castle scene to announce the arrival of defender Kwaku Oduroh on loan from Derby County, is very, very good. Bonus points for the badly shoe-horned text-to-speak dialogue too.

Jesus Navas - Sevilla

Utterly, irrevocably insane. Our video starts with a figure walking down a continental side street as the camera peers out at him from behind a parked car. All of a sudden, two masked assailants jump him from behind, pull a bin liner over his head, and bundle him into the boot of a BMW. From there he is driven to the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan Stadium, and we learn that the poor snatched soul is Jesus Navas - not that he seems too bothered, mind you. The little winger looks positively delighted with his kidnapping experience. Arguably one of the fastest cases of Stockholm Syndrome in recorded human history.