The boyhood teams of some the game’s biggest names
Generally speaking, Premier League footballers are well advised to be discreet about the team they truly support. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of David Bentley, a supposed lifelong Arsenal fan who suddenly professed to be a boyhood Spurs fan upon switching to the north London side. With this imprudent declaration in mind, Spoiler correspondent Ben Baker has rounded up ten footballers whose loyalties don’t necessarily lay with their employers…
Andrei Arshavin
Despite only recently joining the Gunners, fan favourite Arshavin has never hidden the fact that Barcelona are and always have been his team of choice. He has said he was devastated when a move to the Catalan giants never fully materialised when he was at Zenit and has even stated that he would love to play for Barca since he has been at Arsenal. Now if that isn’t a ploy to gain a bigger contract…
John Terry
Mr. Chelsea didn’t make it to Manchester City in the end this summer. Many Chelsea fans will like to think that it is because he is Blue through and through. However, Terry was actually a Manchester Utd fan growing up. Could this be why he couldn’t bring himself to join the Citizens?
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
The baby faced assassin made a name for himself at Manchester Utd,
Well, nice one England, you’ve done it again. You’ve wasted another yet another glorious player, and Steven Gerrard is now doomed to spend his autumn years mumbling in pubs about what might have been, alongside Le Tissier, McManaman, Fowler, and nobody’s favourite evangelist, Glenn Hoddle.
Above is The Spoiler’s dream XI of players either mismanaged or completely overlooked by England managers past and present. In goal, Scott Carson is unlikely to recover from the most bizarre and dreadful competitive international debut against Croatia (McClaren’s final insult), Arsenal’s Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn were criminally blanked by the likes of Bobby Robson and Terry Venables.
Yesterday, Spanish giants Barcelona unveiled their shiny new away kit, using fugly stars including Leo Messi and Carles ‘Captain Caveman’ Puyol.
Superstar players Deco, Eto’o and Ronaldinho were all absent from the launch, as they are fully expected to be plying their trade elsewhere in 2008/09. A semi-surprising absentee, however, was a certain Mr Thierry Henry.
So, if the Frenchman won’t be knocking about in Catalonia next season, where will he be? Well, yesterday he played in a charity match in Americaland, which also included Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler and New York Red Bulls captain Claudio Reyna. Couple this with the fact that in 2007 he told the New York Times he would like to end his career in the Big Apple, and it looks like the striker could be following David Beckham across the Atlantic to play some Major League Soccerball pretty soon…
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