Marco Boogers committed 'horror tackle' on Manchester United legend Gary Neville, was 'instantly dis
Marco Boogers' short but sweet stint in the Premier League included some wild stories at West Ham.
The striker spent his entire career in his native Netherlands except for a few months in east London.
Harry Redknapp was West Ham's manager when he watched some videos of Boogers in the Eredivisie before signing him for £1million from Sparta Rotterdam in 1995.
Had 'Arry watched Boogers in the flesh, he might have saved his pennies rather than splashing out.
“I could have gone to Napoli or Everton, and Borussia Dortmund wanted me as well,” the player said after arriving at the club.
“But suddenly West Ham came in. That was a beautiful club to me, with the famous colours alone. So I chose West Ham.”
Future World Cup winner Fabio Cannavaro was playing for Napoli at the time while Dortmund would go on to win the Champions League a couple of years later.
Boogers and new boss Redknapp, instead, were on collision course and, bizarrely, it all started with a crunching tackle on Gary Neville.
Manchester United star Neville was only 20 years old, in what was set to be his first campaign as a starter, but Boogers, not long off the bench, sent the youngster flying, getting a red card just moments into his second appearance in the English game.
Having admitted that his Hollywood hero was Bruce Willis, Boogers must have mistook Neville for Hans Gruber when he steamed into him like a train with his studs up and planting them into his knee.
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Boogers insisted that he slipped on the wet grass but TV replays suggest otherwise, as he wiped the right-back out at full pelt and sparked a melee with the United squad.
It led to back pages with the words 'HORROR TACKLE' and it's unsurprising.
It all got too much for Boogers, who fled the country to return to the Netherlands - leading to yet another crazy story with the headline: "Barmy Boogers Living In A Caravan."
It became folklore at West Ham but there was no truth behind it, all stemming from miscommunication.
Bill Prosser, the club's PA announcer has cleared up the matter since, saying: "West Ham's Clubcall reporter phoned me and said he was trying to find Boogers for an interview but could not reach him.
"He asked if I had booked any flights for him. I told him I hadn't, but added: 'If he has gone back to Holland, he's probably gone by car again'.
"The reporter misheard me and stated on Clubcall that I had said 'If he's gone back to Holland, he's probably gone to his caravan'."
Boogers would return to West Ham, though with little success after two more cameos from the bench in heavy defeats to Aston Villa and Blackburn.
A knee injury and his son's birth saw him be allowed to return to the Netherlands yet again over December and January and by February he had left the club after Redknapp lost his patience and signed Iain Dowie as a replacement.
“It seems that every player who can tie his own bootlaces is worth £1million. I’ve got one who can’t even do that,” he said as he tried to get rid of the striker.
“He’s coming back on Tuesday but I wouldn’t put money on him still being here Wednesday.
"He doesn’t like the way we train and he doesn’t like being tackled in training. Now I can only hope to sell him back to a club in Holland."
Redknapp would eventually get his wish, loaning him to Dutch side Groningen before he moved to RKC Waalwijk on a permanent basis in the summer.
Boogers would play out his career fairly quietly in the Dutch lower leagues before becoming a technical director at FC Dordecht, but Redknapp's disappointment would not subside.
He does, though, concede in a time before foreign stars were helped to acclimatise, the club could have served Boogers better.
"Sometimes I look back and wonder whether it wasn't our fault," he said in a 2003FourFourTwo interview.
"You bring 'em over here for loads of money and then leave them to get on with the day-to-day bits and pieces of life and that's not easy. You just say, 'Here's yer boots, here's where you are living, get on with it'.
"They don't speak a word of English and after a month Marco's wife was crying, she's missing her mother and we can't understand any of it.
"It's not right because we expect them to arrive and settle in just like that. There's no after-care. It's not on, but that's how it was at West Ham. Now it's different at the top clubs who employ people to look after foreigners."
But, since then, Redknapp has continued to brand him one of his worst signings.
"Right from the word go Boogers' attitude stank," he said.
"He was among the stragglers at the back whenever we went for a run, he didn't want to work, he was lazy and the players all took an instant dislike to him.
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"I suppose you could say he could play a bit, but certainly he was nowhere near as impressive as the video had made him out to be."
Don't hold back, Harry...
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