Top 5 English stars who moved to LaLiga

#2 Steve McManaman

Steve McManaman had a surprisingly fruitful run at Real Madrid

When the Bosman Ruling was introduced to football in the late 1990’s, one of the first players to make a high-profile move without a transfer fee was Steve McManaman. The England international winger made the move to Real Madrid from Liverpool in the summer of 1999, and signed a contract worth £60,000 per week with a £2m signing on fee – making him the highest paid British footballer to that date.

Despite being the first player to move to LaLiga from the Premier League, McManaman immediately settled into his new surroundings at the Bernabeu and assisted the winning goal for striker Fernando Morientes on his debut against Mallorca, and then scored his first goal a week later on his home debut.

His performances stayed at that high level throughout the season, and his crowning achievement at the club came in the summer of 2000, when Los Blancos defeated Valencia 3-0 to win the Champions League, with McManaman scoring Real’s second goal.

McManaman would fall out of favour on a number of occasions at Real – largely through no fault of his own and more because he wasn’t seen as one of Real’s Galacticos.

But he continued to perform well when he was deployed, and ended up winning two La Liga titles at the club in 2000/01 and 2002/03, as well as another Champions League in 2001/02; this time McManaman scored a crucial goal in the semi-finals against Barcelona.

Overall, despite a lower profile than some of the bigger names that shared the pitch with him at the Bernabeu, McManaman had a tremendous run at Real and should probably go down as one of the most underrated English players of his era.