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No. 1 Jean Tigana. I was convinced that he was the best midfielder in the World. Platini? Pff! Brady? Well, ok...Don Masson...maybe... I used to play 11 v 11 on the carpet with Panini football stickers, lego goals and a marble. Tigana was better than any of them. Ran the show. Always on the winning team, too. A fierce man for the last-minute winner. In real life? Haven't a clue. If he ever saw him on the telly, I'd be surprised. Couldn't even tell you what clubs he played for. But, seriously, look at that wistful little face and tell me there was anyone better.
"The opposite of love, after all, is not hate, but indifference."
I was 8 ... England failed to make it to the 1974 World Cup and so I had to support another country in that tournament ... Step forward Johnny Rep and the Netherlands. The best team never to win the World Cup? (74 & 78) seemed to fit perfectly with the QPR team of 75/76 that should have won the League ... Bowles versus Rep ... the dummy, the drop of the shoulder, the shimmy, nutmeg, jiggery-pokery, hocus pocus, abracadabra ... tough call, isn't it?.... All those nearly moments kind of set me up for a life of 'Oh F*ck its'.
[Post edited 31 Aug 2023 14:28]
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 14:26 - Aug 31 with 4511 views
Harald "Toni" Schumacher. I played in goal so I enjoyed watching one of us belting one of them. No idea which club he played for or whether he was any good, it was right place, right time.
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 14:27 - Aug 31 with 4513 views
Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 14:17 - Aug 31 by Rs_Holy
I was 8 ... England failed to make it to the 1974 World Cup and so I had to support another country in that tournament ... Step forward Johnny Rep and the Netherlands. The best team never to win the World Cup? (74 & 78) seemed to fit perfectly with the QPR team of 75/76 that should have won the League ... Bowles versus Rep ... the dummy, the drop of the shoulder, the shimmy, nutmeg, jiggery-pokery, hocus pocus, abracadabra ... tough call, isn't it?.... All those nearly moments kind of set me up for a life of 'Oh F*ck its'.
[Post edited 31 Aug 2023 14:28]
Same. Started going to QPR in 75/76 and couldn't work out why the teams we played against weren't trying to play like Holland. AND they have the best kits in orange too.
I used to play Championship Manager 00/01, and he came in to the game and was my absolute hero. Didn't lay eyes on him until years later. A very good player in real life I think, but not quite the player I had at my fingertips in my spare room on some old shite computer in 2001.
Honourable mentions: Hugo Leal Peter Wattovarra Alexander Farnerud
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 14:39 - Aug 31 with 4450 views
Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 14:26 - Aug 31 by MrSheen
Harald "Toni" Schumacher. I played in goal so I enjoyed watching one of us belting one of them. No idea which club he played for or whether he was any good, it was right place, right time.
"No idea which club he played for or whether he was any good, it was right place, right time"
Stan got the European scoring record against him in 1976.
That was originally a b&w photo I saw on Twitter that I tried colourising with one of those apps but Cologne's red shirts came out blue and Schumacher's yellow shirt turned green...
I'm not sure that I'm allowed my choice as I did know a little about him, but step forward Georgi Asparuhov! I even had the pleasure of watching him score a wonder goal for Bulgaria against England in 1968(?). In a poll during this century, approx 80% of the population voted him as the best Bulgarian player ever. What makes this amazing is that most voters wouldn't have been alive when he played!
In the days of Bulgaria being a strict Communist state, Georgi was known as the Bulgarian Beatle due to his haircut & wardrobe. His government also forbid him to travel to play in a testimonial for Lev Yashin as they feared that the USSR would not let him return!
Unfortunately, he died very young in a car crash. He owned the only sports car in Bulgaria & smashed it into a tree at an excessive speed.
I know I'm very biased, but it is touch & go as to whether Asparuhov or Cruyff was the better player!
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 15:04 - Aug 31 with 4374 views
I remember when growing up in the 90s and overseas players were still a rarity in the English game, that when I went to my early QPR games with my Dad with us in Division One, every time we'd play against a team with a foreign player in it I'd be scared of them assuming they were absolutely amazing. You don't really realise at that age I suppose that foreign players in Division One were just as rubbish as our good old English lads in that league.
In regards to the Championship Manager reference, I'm sure all of us CM/FM players in days gone by had obscure overseas players that became legends in our computers! One of mine was Ze Elias, a Brazilian midfielder I had for my Genoa team in CM03/04 who was an absolute lynchpin for 10 years, taking me to Serie A titles, Europe and beyond. His real life career wasn't quite so impressive sadly.
That Genoa team of mine also had Belarussian Pavel Beganskiy and our old player Alessandro Pellicori as strikers who were both guaranteed 30+ goals per year. Beganskiy hasn't got terrible career stats in his real life career according to Wikipedia, but all at a fairly naff level. Pellicori's real life record is pretty naff and he also got banned for 3 years for match fixing in 2012.
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 15:46 - Aug 31 with 4239 views
If you'd convinced yourself that Tigana was the best midfielder in the world without ever seeing him play or knowing anything about him then that's an incredible bit of intuition, Brian - because he was definitely one of the best midfielders in the world for about eight, nine years in the 80s. The lynchpin box-to-box member of the best midfield I ever saw, that French four of Platini, Giresse, Tigana and Fernandez who won the 1984 Euros. Absolute dream of a player. Could do the lot and always with his shirt untucked, looking as if he was just on his way to the bar.
Best bit about him is he wasn't signed professionally to a club until he 20 or so. He'd been a postman and worked in a pasta factory before being spotted. Went on to win the French league three times with Bordeaux and twice for Marseilles, the Euros and three European finals. Sort of like if Stuart Wardley had turned out to be Roy Keane.
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 15:49 - Aug 31 with 4222 views
Back in the mid-seventies in the days before 24/7 saturation football Liverpool played a French team in the UEFA Cup (QF?) David Fairclough would’ve been super-sub hero for the reds but who were this exotically-named French team? It’s St.Etienne (you could do a lot with a name like that, form a band for instance) and their talisman is the mercurial Dominique Rocheteau, who is sort of like a French Kevin Keegan, ie much cooler … he beats defenders with insouciance, a Gauloise hanging from his bottom lip, and he’s in one of the best kits I’d ever seen, green with a tricolour collar le diable est dans les détails mon cherie. And then Rocheteau is gone, did he even really exist I wonder and I have to keep an image of those beautiful green shirts in my memory patiently waiting each two years for world cups and euro tournaments hoping that France qualify and Dominique is selected - but of course he’s selected. There he is sparking up French tabs and knocking in goals for fun like some kind of footballing Alain Delon. Only now, after all these years, do I discover he was a revolutionary communist from a long-line of oyster farmers. He also had a career in film and TV. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Well I suppose I probably could but in this case I didn’t. Vive le Dom.
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 15:55 - Aug 31 with 4179 views
I know this probably sounds boring but I've never really had much interest in knowing about players outside of them playing for QPR. Some people seem really fascinated in players lives, each onto their own I guess.
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 15:55 - Aug 31 with 4183 views
Sure Tigana was on the French team that lost to Germany where Schumacher basically assaulted Battiston and left him half dead. People have done time for less. As for Tigana . What a player.
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 15:59 - Aug 31 with 4176 views
Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 14:33 - Aug 31 by Monkey_Roots
Ricardo Quaresma.
I used to play Championship Manager 00/01, and he came in to the game and was my absolute hero. Didn't lay eyes on him until years later. A very good player in real life I think, but not quite the player I had at my fingertips in my spare room on some old shite computer in 2001.
Honourable mentions: Hugo Leal Peter Wattovarra Alexander Farnerud
In a similar vein, when I dug out Champ Manager (2017, I think) during the early pandemic months, and succeeded in getting QPR to win the Premier League, Andrei Ivan was the talisman. Romanian number 9 who banged them in religiously. Became a club legend. Scored 30-40 a season. When the chips were down, he delivered.
In real life he has had a pretty uninspiring career and only played 17 times for Romania in 8 years scoring once. He’s only succeeded (but scored a lot of goals) for Universitatea Craiova in the Romanian top tier.
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 16:04 - Aug 31 with 4163 views
Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 15:49 - Aug 31 by DannyPaddox
Back in the mid-seventies in the days before 24/7 saturation football Liverpool played a French team in the UEFA Cup (QF?) David Fairclough would’ve been super-sub hero for the reds but who were this exotically-named French team? It’s St.Etienne (you could do a lot with a name like that, form a band for instance) and their talisman is the mercurial Dominique Rocheteau, who is sort of like a French Kevin Keegan, ie much cooler … he beats defenders with insouciance, a Gauloise hanging from his bottom lip, and he’s in one of the best kits I’d ever seen, green with a tricolour collar le diable est dans les détails mon cherie. And then Rocheteau is gone, did he even really exist I wonder and I have to keep an image of those beautiful green shirts in my memory patiently waiting each two years for world cups and euro tournaments hoping that France qualify and Dominique is selected - but of course he’s selected. There he is sparking up French tabs and knocking in goals for fun like some kind of footballing Alain Delon. Only now, after all these years, do I discover he was a revolutionary communist from a long-line of oyster farmers. He also had a career in film and TV. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Well I suppose I probably could but in this case I didn’t. Vive le Dom.
European Cup quarter final March 1977. Could have been us playing Les Verts.
Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 15:49 - Aug 31 by DannyPaddox
Back in the mid-seventies in the days before 24/7 saturation football Liverpool played a French team in the UEFA Cup (QF?) David Fairclough would’ve been super-sub hero for the reds but who were this exotically-named French team? It’s St.Etienne (you could do a lot with a name like that, form a band for instance) and their talisman is the mercurial Dominique Rocheteau, who is sort of like a French Kevin Keegan, ie much cooler … he beats defenders with insouciance, a Gauloise hanging from his bottom lip, and he’s in one of the best kits I’d ever seen, green with a tricolour collar le diable est dans les détails mon cherie. And then Rocheteau is gone, did he even really exist I wonder and I have to keep an image of those beautiful green shirts in my memory patiently waiting each two years for world cups and euro tournaments hoping that France qualify and Dominique is selected - but of course he’s selected. There he is sparking up French tabs and knocking in goals for fun like some kind of footballing Alain Delon. Only now, after all these years, do I discover he was a revolutionary communist from a long-line of oyster farmers. He also had a career in film and TV. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Well I suppose I probably could but in this case I didn’t. Vive le Dom.
Is he smoking a ciggie?
'Always In Motion' by John Honney available on amazon.co.uk
Micky Vintner. Notts County & Wrexham. Knew eff all about him but liked his name. Always hoping the Rs would sign him. Modern equivalents would be Shroot, Kachunga, and Bongo Christ.
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 22:52 - Aug 31 with 3585 views
I was watching a Barcelona match once sometime between 10 and 30 years ago. At least I think I was. They brought on a midfield substitute and the commentator was raving saying what a good player he is, known for his one touch passing and never EVER touches the ball more than twice. It wasn't Iniesta or Xavi or fcking Pepe or any of them. I think he had big curly hair (not puyol) but who knows. It might not have been Barcelona it might have been Spain or someone else.
Anyway I can't remember his name but I fcking love him.
Also Gheorghe Popescu. Even if he played for Spurs.
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 00:21 - Sep 1 with 3494 views
Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 19:56 - Aug 31 by DannyPaddox
Micky Vintner. Notts County & Wrexham. Knew eff all about him but liked his name. Always hoping the Rs would sign him. Modern equivalents would be Shroot, Kachunga, and Bongo Christ.
Micky Vintner was an anarcho-syndicalist from a long line of port and madeira importers.
Lev Yashin - just the romance of the name, the danger of the CCCP, and I was already infatuated with Yuri Gagarin. Of a different colour, Lee Trundle. Google tells me he's still playing!
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Players You Loved But Knew Nothing About on 05:45 - Sep 1 with 3394 views
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