Reading FC Signed Striker For £1m But He Left So Quickly

Reading may have allowed a star to slip through the cracks in the form of Orlando Sa, who joined the club in the summer before the 2015/16 season before leaving for pastures new in the January transfer window of that campaign.

Signed for a reported £1 million from Legia Warsaw, which looked like a bargain for someone who had previously made one senior appearance for the Portuguese national team, it never really worked out for him in Berkshire.

Sa may have been a hidden gem, as just a year later he signed for Belgium Pro League side Standard Liege and scored 20 goals in all competitions in his first season at the club.

Now that the Royals are in League One, fans may see him as a missed opportunity and someone who could have made a real difference in blue and white.

Orlando Sa didn’t have the best of starts at Reading

Sa came with plenty of hype, with one senior appearance for Portugal to his name and 14 goals for Legia Warsaw in the season before, but he was never able to show that form in England.

Perhaps it was just written in the stars that this transfer wouldn’t work out, as the striker missed a penalty in his Championship debut at Birmingham City.

The missed penalty was made even worse by the fact that it came in the last-minute and the Royals ended up losing the game 2-1.

He made up for his poor start a few weeks later, scoring his first goal against Brentford in a 3-1 away win, before scoring a hat-trick in the subsequent match against Ipswich Town, which was part of a 5-1 victory.

Unfortunately, that would be the best run of form that he went on and in his six-month spell at Reading, he only managed five goals in 21 appearances.

A goal every four games is not a terrible ratio for a striker, especially one settling into a new country, but things then got worse for Sa.

The manager who signed him, Steve Clarke, was sacked in December 2015 and replaced by Brian McDermott. McDermott never really took to Sa, and hardly played him before selling him to Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Orlando Sa league goals for selected clubs (via Transfermarkt)
Club	League games played	Goals
Legia Warsaw	33	14
Reading	19	5
Standard Liege	61	25

Life after Reading for Orlando Sa

Following a brief stint with Maccabi in which he impressed, Belgium Pro League side Standard Liege snapped him up on a four-year contract.

Liege would see his most prolific season, scoring 20 goals in all competitions in his debut season.

His spell in the country would come to an end in February 2018, when he joined Henan Jianye in the Chinese Super League.

A true journeyman, Sa had heaps of quality and could have made a real impact in England if he was given a proper chance, and he remains one of the biggest ‘What ifs?’ in Reading’s history.

He is now retired, having left Segunda Division side Malaga in 2021 following a career-ending Achilles injury.