Ally McCoist: I wanted to sign £3.5m Luka Modric for Rangers, Walter Smith said we couldn’t afford it
Rangers missed out on signing Real Madrid star Luka Modric for £3.5million early in his career according to Ally McCoist.
The Croatian was in supreme form last night as a Karim Benzema hat-trick dispatched Paris Saint-Germain at the Santiago Bernabeu, and former Gers hero McCoist has revealed he tried to get former boss Walter Smith to sign him before he moved to Tottenham.
The ex-Ibrox striker shared how he was sent on a scouting trip to Croatia and felt the fee would have been enough at the time, but the Light Blues were unable to afford it.
McCoist told Alan Brazil on talkSPORT, via Football Scotland: “Walter sent me over to Dinamo Zagreb to look at the right back who went to Spurs as well, Vedran Corluka.
“He phoned me after the game and said ‘what do you think?’ and I said ‘I’ll tell you gaffer, they’ve got a wee boy in the middle of the park, he’s absolutely outrageous, see how much money we’ve got’.
“I think we could have got him for £3.5m but we didn’t have the money.”
“Aw wow. We didn’t have the money. He asked ‘how much?’ and I said three and a half million and he said we can’t afford it. What a football player. He’s been great to watch.”
What could have been
Football is littered with stories of missed opportunities on players that became superstars to have been picked up before they were famous.
Most of those stories seem to come from Arsene Wenger, but this one will have Gers fans wondering what impact the diminutive play-maker could have had in Glasgow.
The 36-year-old, who scored a screamer in La Liga this week, became a star in North London before moving to Madrid for a fee of £30million.
Considering how he adapted to the Premier League he would have surely been a stand-out in the Scottish Premiership.
There was no way of knowing that at the time of course, otherwise the club would have moved heaven and earth to come up with what now seems like peanuts for such a player.
The thought of Modric operating at Ibrox is likely to turn fans’ attention back to the superstar midfield man they currently have at the club.
Aaron Ramsey has barely featured under Giovanni van Bronckhorst since his loan move from Juventus.
If he can finally shake the nagging injuries and have an impact on the team it would go a long way to helping the club chase down Celtic at the top of the SPFL.
In other Rangers news, an ex-Light Blues player believes the fans can get the Australian tour plans stopped.