Former Rangers boss Alex McLeish previously revealed how close the Ibrox club came to signing a young Andres Iniesta from Barcelona.
And some Light Blue legions briefly thought the Spanish legend had come out of retirement to move to Govan a signing announcement almost caught them out. When fans saw the headline ‘Andres Iniestra has signed for Rangers FC’ it’s easy to see why they had to do a double take. But closer inspection of course revealed it wasn’t a spelling error in the surname and neither was it the Scottish Premiership outfit.
Instead, it was a 28-year-old Mexican midfielder of the (almost) same who has signed for Andorran minnows Ranger’s FC from Cancun. Fans across Britain reacted on social media to the announcement with one saying: “Thought Andres Iniesta was signing for Glasgow Rangers,” another adding: “They thought they were getting the real one.” Another added: “Wait… I had to read that a few times.”
The real Iniesta hung up his boots last year after his final playing spell at Emirates in the UAE. It brought the curtain down on a glittering career where he became one of the world’s greats, winning nine La Liga titles and four Champions Leagues with Barcelona and a World Cup and two European Championships with Spain.
In an interview in 2017, McLeish revealed the then teenager brought to his attention in 2004. Rangers were looking to replace Barry Ferguson, who had moved to Blackburn, and McLeish used his assistant Jan Wouters’ contacts in a bid to find a ball player capable of filling his skipper’s boots.
The search took him to the Camp Nou, where Wouters’ pal Frank Rijkaard was boss, and a loan deal for the midfield maestro looked to be on.
However, all the Ibrox club’s inquiry resulted in doing was promoting Iniesta into the Barca first team within a week of their interest being made known.
McLeish said: “Jan Wouters phoned Henk ten Cate, who was Rijkaard’s assistant at Barcelona. Jan asked if there was anybody we could get and was told about a young kid called Iniesta. He was only 18 at the time. We asked if we could bring him to Scotland and were told that they would try and make some hay at Barcelona and get him over to us. They said Iniesta needed to get some action.”