I wonder though, has this been a good thing for the footballing world? The normal fan can now watch upwards of 20 football games per week from the comfort of his own home, possible signings for his club can be scrutinized on message boards and any information needed on the player is readily available. The history of a player can be revealed in a touch of a button and these players can be just as promptly heralded as potential greats or disregarded as not good enough.
Compare this to 15 years ago when I was growing up watching The Rangers. The average fan probably couldn't name you Barcelona's starting line up, or tell you which of Sao Paulo's young crop of players were destined for greatness.
Translate this into players who were purchased for Rangers and the results may be quite interesting. How would signings such as Laudrup & Albertz be perceived now with us able to acquire all the information we needed on the player within a matter of minutes?
Laudrup is perhaps a less interesting comparison as two years before The Rangers signed the player he had played a pivotal role in landing the European Championships in remarkable fashion for Denmark. The point remains though, that Laudrup didn't reach the heights in Italy, especially in 93-94. Or how about Jorg Albertz? An absolute hero of mine growing up and one of the hardest free kicks I've ever seen. 160 appearances in seven seasons for Fortuna Dusseldorf and Hamburg. Would this have been thought worthy of a £4million bid had fans been able to scrutinize Albertz carefully prior to him signing? I'm not so sure.
I'd like to say, I am in no way trying to denounce two of my favourite ex-players; the point i'm merely trying to make is, with all this information available would fans be delighted to be linked with a player of Albertz stature in the game, especially for the fee mentioned?
It goes to show that, in some cases the Internet may not be as useful as good old fashioned word of mouth or tip offs from contacts.
I'll leave you with this little thought.
If the internet now makes it easier to potentially scout or at the very least gain some information on almost every player around the globe, why are we getting worse at it?