WEST Ham, January transfer deadline day. Out: Javier Mascherano. In: Nigel Quashie. Not since Rodney blew the budget of Trotters Independent Traders on a job lot of suntan lotion in the middle of London’s coldest winter has the East End seen stranger business judgment applied. Quashie is a serviceable professional but you would hardly have him cloned. Mascherano, on the other hand, might prove Rafael Benitez right and be the “new Claude Makelele”.

For “Maka” read “Masche”? As well as their nicknames the Argentinian and the Frenchman are similar in size and house the same concentration of brains, focus and competitiveness within tiny, yet teak-tough frames. Liverpool’s finishing caught the eye in Eindhoven but their starting point was Mascherano in midfield. His tackling and intercepting enabled his team to defend the area; his passing, in concert with Xabi Alonso, to control it. “He doesn’t speak perfect English yet but on the pitch you have to speak with your feet,” Alonso noted. “He does that really well.”

That Mascherano was first ignored and then jettisoned by West Ham surprised discerning observers in England but amazed them in Spain. “I knew about Javier many years ago. I saw him play several games for River Plate on television before I came to Liverpool,” said Alonso.

“He was well known in Spain when he was 19 or 20. He was a target for Real Madrid and because of that all the media was keeping an eye on him and he was becoming popular.” Real wanted Mascherano as the replacement when they sold Makelele to Chelsea in 2003-04, but two mysterious management companies who “own” the player, Global Soccer Agencies (GSA) and Mystere Services Ltd, had different plans and transferred him to Corinthians. So began the saga that brought Mascherano, along with Carlos Tevez, to Upton Park and Mascherano onwards to Anfield.

“He took another path. The story is complicated,” said Alonso with some understatement. “But now he’s arrived at Liverpool and we are happy that he’s with us.”

It cost West Ham a payment of £339,000 plus about £800,000 in wages to lease Mascherano from GSA and Mystere, and the club’s alleged failure to disclose paperwork relating to the deal, and that for Tevez, could see them fined a further six-figure sum and deducted points by the Premier League. For the sake of all that, West Ham used Mascherano in just seven games. All were defeats and in none of the matches did West Ham score. Alan Pardew, citing the need for experienced campaigners during difficult times, preferred Nigel Reo-Coker and Hayden Mullins. His successor, Alan Curbishley, never considered Mascherano and traded him to buy Quashie for £1.5m. For the same sum, Liverpool secured Mascherano for 18 months with the option of a longer deal at the end of that period. Benitez, who travelled to the player’s London Docklands flat to persuade Mascherano to choose Anfield in the face of interest from Juventus and Real Zaragoza, pulled off a transfer coup only matched by Sir Alex Ferguson’s short-term deal for Henrik Larsson.

Mascherano had to wait first for Fifa then the Premier League to ratify his move and could not make his debut until February 24, but he has already played more minutes for Liverpool (352 before the Reading game) than for West Ham (393) and started Liverpool’s past four games.

“West Ham were in a difficult position, everything was going wrong, and in that situation it’s difficult for any player to play at their level. It’s been important for Javier to prove he can play well for a team like Liverpool,” Alonso said. Benitez marvels how, despite being just 22, Mascherano already has 20 caps for Argentina; he is considered such a prodigy in his own country that he made his international debut before he even played for his first club, River Plate. “He plays like a 30-year-old,” said Alonso. “He has a cool mind on the pitch. He is analysing and thinking about the game in each moment.”

Benitez said Mascherano is “a monster of a player”. Have West Ham made the season’s most monstrous mistake?

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