The Players That Failed To Adapt Fully to English Soccer!!
10) Eric Cantona. Predictable but unmissable. The musings about art, the unprepossessing semi in which he chose to live, the bizarre cardigans and, of course, the cobblers about seagulls were all classic Mad Foreigner stuff, and the kung-fu kick remains the benchmark of “latin temperament”. Le Roi, obviously.
9) Tomas Brolin. In total (transfer fee, wages and severance agreement) Tommy boy is rumoured to have cost Leeds the thick end of seven million quid. In return, he slurped up oceans of northern ale, wolfed down the local pies, and grew a scrubby beard and a pot belly. Then he pissed off.
8) Branco. Just one of a whole raft of overseas misfits at Middlesbrough, but he makes the list because of his famous team talk. Before one of the few matches in which he actually played, the Brazilian left-back, to the astonishment of his teammates, stood up in the dressing room and delivered this rousing rallying cry… “pass.. pass… pass… pass… goal!… lager… lager… nightclub!”
7) Maurizio Gaudino. Manchester’s hirsute, fancy dan German midfielder was forced to return to the continent when plod implicated him in a car theft ring. He protested his innocence long and loud. Convicted, of course.
6) Ilie Dumitrescu. Following a fine 1994 World Cup with Romania, Ilie pitched up at Spurs. Within three weeks, he had made the inside pages of the News Of The World. A fuzzy photograph showed the midfielder performing an oral tonsilectomy on a young wench in the back of his car. His wife? No, sir! A London policewoman!
5) Florin Raducioiu. Dumitrescu’s compatriot was another who arrived, this time at West Ham, with a big reputation but was clearly more interested in the pop-up toasters and McDonald's that the western world offered than in anything so tiresome as actually playing football. One Saturday in his short Hammers career, he was late for the team bus, which was idling outside Upton Park. A furious Harry Redknapp rang Florin on his mobile phone. The centre-forward mumbled that he’d forgotten about the match that afternoon, and was at that moment shopping… in Harvey Nichols!
4) Ali Dia. The great man! The story goes something like this. An unknown voice, with an African accent, rings Southampton manager Graeme Souness. “Hi, this is George Weah… I want to recommend this great African player… Ali Dia.” A week later, without much reference-taking, an excited Souness is unveiling the Senegalese striker at the Dell. That weekend, Dia comes off the bench. Twenty minutes later, an embarrassed Souness has to re-substitute the worst player ever to appear for the Saints. And George Weah? Never heard of anyone called Ali Dia…
3) Faustino Asprilla. It was fabulous enough that this fantastic player was preceded into this country by the news that he was connected to the Colombian “business community”, had married to a porn star and carried a large handgun. Once here, he excelled himself. When he first arrived on Tyneside, he spoke not a word of English (an ignorance he maintained, incidentally, for the whole of his time in these islands). But this lack of local lingo didn’t hold our hero back when it came to chatting up the lasses in Newcastle’s plethora of nightclubs. Hell, no! Tino bought himself one of those voice-activated translating machines, whispered his preferred endearment into the microphone, watched as the English translation flashed up on the LED screen, then just showed it to the no doubt suitably impressed lady of his choice! His other great adventure involved a fellow Colombian who Tyneside police arrested when they noticed that his pronounced limp was caused by the four pounds of cocaine strapped to his left leg. When asked where he’d acquired the money to purchase such a formidable tonnage of Class A, the miscreant said he’d got it from Asprilla. Tino, bold as brass, said that he’d met the fellow in a pub, fallen for his hard luck story and lent him £20,000 to help a compatriot out. Nothing more to it than that, then…
2) Marco Boogers. Another problem for Harry Redknapp. This Dutch centre-forward played a few desultory games for the Hammers, memorably getting sent off within moments of coming on as a sub at Old Trafford, then disappeared. West Ham then received a note from Boogers’ doctor in Holland saying that the poor fellow had gone mad. Further enquiries by the club seemed to back up this view. They discovered that their highly paid employee had retreated to the Dutch countryside, where he was living in a caravan!
1) Ulrich Wilson. Ulrich was a Dutch midfielder signed by Ipswich. He arrived at Harwich, where his suitcase was discovered to be full of not boots, studs and shinpads, but of pornography of such foulness that Her Majesty’s Customs had no alternative but to deport the fellow straight back whence he came. When Ipswich contacted him to find out what the hell was going on (the British authorities never allowed him to set foot in this country again) he said that he was bring the literature over at the request of fellow Dutchman and Ipswich star Romeo Zondervan!