With Juan Roman Riquelme taking to social media to congratulate Lionel Messi on his World Cup win, Evertonians have been reminded of another long-running saga – the repeated speculation that the Argentinian playmaker was heading to Goodison Park.
Riquelme – who was Messi’s idol as a youngster before he replaced him as number 10 for the national side – offered his thanks in an Instagram post after Argentina secured their third World Cup success with a 4-2 penalty shoot-out victory over holders France following a thrilling 3-3 draw.
Messi netted twice in the game to ensure he scored in every round of the 2022 finals in Qatar before lifting the trophy with the added bonus of being the Golden Ball winner as player of the tournament with Riquelme hailing the World Cup as being the missing trophy in the 35-year-old’s collection. Back in the noughties, Riquelme to Everton was the transfer rumour that would not go away.
Window after window, the attacking midfielder was linked with a move to the Blues. Whenever deadline day arrived, it was invariably claimed that there had been various sightings of Riquelme across Merseyside whether it was at John Lennon Airport or coming out of the Hot Wok. Now 44, the San Fernando-born player who is back at his first club Boca Juniors as vice president having hung up his boots in 2015, only got to play at Goodison once in his career and that was in opposition for Villarreal in a Champions League qualifying round tie in 2005.
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However, the Riquelme to Everton rumours reached their zenith in July 2007 when a story appeared on the club’s official website on a Monday morning claiming that he was on his way from Spain. The ‘news’ quickly spread onto Everton forums only for the article to be quickly removed from the Everton website, where a statement appeared claiming the earlier publication was ‘completely untrue and appeared as a result of a technical error that occurred during some maintenance work on the site.’
A club spokesperson explained: “During the process of uploading the new home page designs for the website some test data was displayed for a very short period of time and was immediately removed after it had been identified. Example data had been used during the testing process and this was unfortunately missed by our appointed web development company during the final upload.
“We have since spoken to our suppliers to convey our complete dissatisfaction at the way in which this misinformation appeared and they have apologised to the club and any Everton supporters who may have may have read the test article.”
While Riquelme never did sign for Everton, in 2011 Denis Stracqualursi had the honour of becoming the club’s first Argentinian player. Although he was, like Messi, born in 1987, there were few other similarities between the pair as footballers but the limited but hard-working centre-forward’s determined displays made him something of a cult hero with the Gwladys Street during his season-long loan and in 2015 he was followed by one of Messi’s international team-mates, centre-back Ramiro Funes Mori.
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