James Rodriguez takes a right footed shot and it flies past his team-mate, Keylor Navas to make it Bayern 2 Madrid 2. This is not an own goal though. Rodriguez is a Madrid player but on loan at Bayern. Technically, James just scored against the club which owns him and his goal has them in danger of elimination from the 2017/18 Champions League semis.
This is not the first time something similar has happened in the Champions League. In season 2003/04, Real Madrid president, Florentino Perez, had assembled his original Galacticos. Raúl, Zidane, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos and David Beckham were all turning out in the whites of the Spanish giants. Perez wanted his star players to be on the field as often as possible. This was bad news for a good young striker named Fernando Morientes.
Fernando knew he couldn’t force his way into a regular first team spot and decided to head to Monaco on loan for the season. As fate would have it, Monaco got to the quarter finals and were drawn against Madrid, the favourites for the trophy. The Galacticos truly put up a brilliant attacking display in the first leg in Spain and Madrid were cruising at 4-1 until the 83rd minute when Morientes popped up with a goal for Monaco. It finished 4-2 but many still thought Madrid would easily go through.
Monaco had other ideas. They put up a brave display and won the 2nd leg 3-1, with Morientes scoring yet again and helping to eliminate his beloved Madrid on away goals. There was a big backlash against Perez and the club president brought Fernando back from Monaco for the following season. However he went ahead to buy Michael Owen from Liverpool before the start of that season, meaning it was back to square one for Morientes. He lasted only 5 more months at Madrid before moving permanently to Liverpool in January 2005.
Observers of English football would notice that these situations do not happen because players on loan are not allowed to play against their parent clubs. However, this was not always so. Prior to 2004, English football did allow for players on loan to feature in matches against the clubs who had purchased them. It was left to such clubs to stipulate whether they wanted it or not.
Newcastle loaned Lomana Tresor LuaLua to Portsmouth for 90 days in January 2004 and there was no clause in the contract stating he could not play against them. He had not scored a goal all season, so they probably thought no harm could arise from the situation. They thought wrong.
LuaLua scored an 89th minute equaliser for Pompey against Newcastle on the 1st of March and he absolutely enjoyed it. He threw in a couple somersaults in front of the Newcastle fans, pointed to his name on the back of his shirt, then took it off and threw it onto the pitch. You can imagine the Newcastle fans were not amused.
“I apologise to the Newcastle fans but they don’t know what I have been through,” Lua-Lua later said. “I’m glad I’m somewhere where someone wants me.”
Bobby Robson, the Newcastle manager, lamented “one of our players has taken a point off us”.
“I was pleasantly surprised LuaLua was allowed to play,” remarked Portsmouth manager, Harry Redknapp.
The English FA and the Premier League had one look at all the chaos caused by that goal and decided they were not going to have a repeat. Since that season, players on loan have not been allowed to play against their parent clubs.
Oladimeji Sapoloso
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