The 22-times capped midfielder has endured an unhappy spell at St James’ Park, making just 24 Premiership appearances since his £4million move in May 2000, and is set to re-sign for Velez Sarsfield.
The 29-year-old broke his foot in a pre-season friendly before the start of the 2000-2001 season and never seemed to recover from that blow, failing to come to terms with the pace and physicality of the English game.
Although he didn’t manage the break through into first team football Bassedas could hardly be cast as the archetypal whinging foreign player and was a model professional during his spell on Tyneside, so he goes back to South America with our best wishes.
It is often forgotten that many of Sir Bobby’s early signings failed to produce the goods, with Bassedas arriving from Las Americas with Diego Gavilan, Daniel Cordone, Fumaca and Clarence Acuna thanks largely to former coach Mick Wadsworth’s influence.
How an earth Wadsworth managed to get things so wrong is anyone’s guess -although there are some fairly nasty, but completely unsubstantiated (and given his long association with Sir Bobby almost certainly untrue) rumours doing the rounds about his transfer dealings at other clubs.
But what everyone will agree on is that the new buy young, buy British policy is a vast improvement.