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Top ten most influential players in Premier League history
Date published: Tuesday 21st April 2020 8:21



During their engaging debate about the best European imports in Premier League history, Ian Wright and Gary Lineker got us thinking: who are the most influential players in the modern game?

Lineker disagreed with Wright’s placing of Roy Keane at number one on his list on the basis of there having been other players with a bigger “influence on our game”. And while that is a subjective and vague measure by definition, it is an interesting one.

These ten players are not necessarily the best in Premier League history, but in each case their talent helped create an impact that is still felt to this day, whether that be as the first of their nationality to be embraced on these shores, or as someone who took career steps that many have since followed. The only difference between this and the initial list is that we won’t be restricting it solely to Europeans…



10) Ruud Gullit
In terms of challenging and changing perceptions, few were quite as successful or as important as Ruud Gullit. It was Chelsea who fielded the first all-foreign Premier League XI in December 1999, but the Dutchman who laid those foundations.

His arrival at Stamford Bridge four years prior was not quite the celebrated moment it perhaps should have been. England had not boasted a Ballon d’Or winner in its leagues since Southampton signed Kevin Keegan in 1980, and a two-time European champion had no place in south west London. But there was an uncomfortable assumption that, at 32 and on a sizeable wage, he was here for one last pay day before retirement.

Those suggestions were soon dismissed. He came runner-up in the Footballer of the Year vote in his first season and was an FA Cup-winning player-manager by the end of his second, the third foreign coach in English top-flight history putting forth his claim as a true great. He was also a pioneer of midfield metronomy, having been moved into the role from the sweeper position because his defensive teammates couldn’t quite keep up. Not bad for a mercenary.



9) Rio Ferdinand
While the current going rate for a centre-half capable of standing on two feet and breathing independently is equivalent to the GDP of a small country, it has not always been this way. The Premier League was always far from immune to football’s ignorance of anything but goalscorers and playmakers.

Rio Ferdinand was fighting that battle for relevance almost single-handedly at one point. Before his £18m move to Leeds in November 2000, the biggest fee an English club had ever paid for a defender was the £10.6m Manchester United traded for Jaap Stam in 1998. That remained the record until Ferdinand himself shattered it by moving to Old Trafford for £30m in the summer of 2002. Not until Eliaquim Mangala joined Manchester City in 2014 was that marker beaten. Talk about chalk and cheese.

His impact – Ferdinand’s, not Mangala’s – reached beyond economic factors. Stylistically, he was integral in shaping the modern game, redefining an entire position and establishing an obsession with ball-playing elegance that still exists and has not been matched to this day.


Leeds United StatZone
@lufcsz
⚽� Back in 2000, #LUFC signed @rioferdy5 for £18 million.

Here are the defender's #PL stats from his time in Yorkshire. � @PalmYorkshire

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Gianfranco Zola
‘It has transpired that Parma have been keen to unload Zola after he fell out with their coach, Carlo Ancelotti, and the Italian club will doubtless be very happy with such a fee for a 30-year-old,’ reads a line in The Independent from November 1996, a snapshot of a simpler time when £4.5m seemed like far too steep a fee for someone entering their final playing years.

By the time of his departure in 2003, it was a bargain. Zola was emblematic of Chelsea’s transformation from mid-table stragglers to genuine contenders: they finished either 11th or 14th in the six seasons before he signed and no lower than sixth in seven campaigns with him. His exit for Cagliari came in the same week as Roman Abramovich’s Stamford Bridge takeover, having inspired the Blues to that fateful Champions League place.

Only one man could ever be named FWA Footballer of the Year without having played a full season in England. Or only one “clever little so-and-so”, according to Sir Alex Ferguson.



7) Steve McManaman
If Ferguson is to be believed, Ludek Mikloksko did not cost Manchester United the title in 1995. “We lost the league at Anfield by not listening to instructions about McManaman,” he said in a team talk ahead of a game against Liverpool in 1998, alluding to their 2-0 defeat on Merseyside three years prior. Paul Ince had shirked his man-marking duties to offer the forward the freedom of the right-hand side, which McManaman duly accepted to play a part in the opener before later scoring the second.

It is worth remembering just how good a player he was, at one time rated as highly as Ryan Giggs and the subject of eight-figure bids from Barcelona and Juventus. But McManaman would stay with Liverpool until the summer of 1999, when he became Britain’s first notable Bosman transfer and highest-paid player ever. Real Madrid had come calling and Liverpool, as the BBC put it, did ‘not receive a penny’.

Such moves are commonplace now but before the turn of the millennium it was McManaman tasked with treading new ground. As an English Champions League winner abroad and the first footballer of his generation to write a weekly newspaper column while still playing, there were more than a few trails he blazed.



6) Dennis Bergkamp
For an insight into how remarkably insular the English game can be, Dennis Bergkamp is an ideal case study. Coming third and second in consecutive Ballon d’Or years in the early 1990s mattered little when The Sun could give some Stuart Pearce quotes a ‘BERGY’S A WASTE OF MONEY’ headline, and his initial struggles in England were ripe for the full tabloid treatment: one published an ongoing clock ticking over to mark his initial goal drought, while another gleefully printed a photo of a net to remind the Dutchman what one looked like.

It was the typical reaction of a nation obsessed with the idea that their league was the toughest, the most difficult, the best, and that no ordinary Tom, Dennis or Harry could conquer it. Bergkamp did – thrice – and with the sort of generational skill and old-fashioned aggression that opened many eyes as to how foreign imports could exponentially improve our game rather than impede it.



5) Juninho
The thought of Nigel Pearson rocking up to the Riverside that November afternoon in 1995, only to be greeted by catering trucks serving ‘Juninho burgers with a hot samba sauce’ for £1.20, police horses with ‘Born in Brazil, reborn in Middlesbrough’ hats placed atop their unwitting heads, a giant shirt flypast put on by club sponsors and fans masquerading as a mariachi band, is worthy of an entire Netflix series in itself. Teesside had taken leave of its collective sense, and for good reason.


Boro On This Day
@BoroThis
#OnThisDay 4th November 1995

We all saw Juninho grace a Boro shirt for the first time. We’d shocked English football by sealing the £4.75m signing of the Brazilian. The little fella didn’t disappoint, his superb pass setting up Jan Fjortoft for an early opener.

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The reigning Brazilian Footballer of the Year, “the most sought-after player in the world” according to chief executive Keith Lamb, was here. And if a glorious assist followed by a yellow card for a tackle from behind on Tony Yeboah did not tell those watching that their preconceptions were misplaced, they would soon be made to see.

No foreign player in English football league history has joined a club with whom they have no prior affiliation and become part of its fabric quite as seamlessly as Juninho did at Middlesbrough. Shirts could be hastily printed and season tickets sold but neither tears upon relegation in his first spell nor joy at guiding the club to its first major honour in his third were manufactured.



4) Didier Drogba
“Judge him when he leaves the club,” was Jose Mourinho’s response when questioned as to why Chelsea made Didier Drogba their most expensive player ever in 2004. The 26-year-old striker had played just three seasons of top-flight football after making a late professional debut. He came third in Ligue Un’s Golden Boot race in his first and only Marseille campaign; Liverpool signed the younger top scorer Djibril Cisse from Auxerre the previous month for almost half as much.

Mourinho was, of course, right. The critics were soon silenced by the first and still only African player to reach 100 Premier League goals. They were confounded by the artist who revelled on the biggest stages. They marvelled at a star who used his platform for the greater good, mixing off-pitch philanthropy with uncharitable treatment of centre-halves on it. He was not the first African player on these shores, but he sure as hell remains the barometer of brilliance.



3) David Beckham
The timing could not have been better. As David Beckham was lobbing Neil Sullivan on that sunny August afternoon, the Premier League was approaching the peak of its cultural significance. It was on that rocket that the boy from London would be strapped as he transcended the sport that made him.

Beckham was not the first celebrity footballer but remains the most enduring. Children today idolise someone they never saw play live; those who ignore and abhor the game still recognise the name. His is a brand that long precedes Facegram, InstaTok and TwitSpace and could conceivably outlast them all.

No player has maximised his gifts through incessant application, nor captured the imagination of continents and mastered the growing media spotlight, like the ‘Gaultier-saronged, Posh Spiced, Cooled Britannia, look-at-me, what-a-lad, loadsamoney, sex-and-shopping, fame-schooled, daytime-TV, over-coiffed twerp’. Thanks to the Daily Telegraph for that one.



2) Thierry Henry
Show me anyone who has never reconstructed, in their own garden, peeling off the last defender, taking a single touch on the left-hand side to receive a pass in the penalty area, opening up their body and lifting and curling the ball ever so slightly into the far bottom corner, and I will present to you either a bare-faced liar or someone who has never truly lived. Thierry Henry had his trademark goal and there was rarely a damn thing even the finest defenders could do about it.

The Frenchman, at his peak, might be the most entertaining, watchable player in Premier League history. There was an unfathomably equal level of innocence and insouciance to his play, a humble arrogance. He enjoyed performing and we, the audience, demanded an encore each week.

It would be incredibly unfair to characterise strikers as plodding, meat-and-potatoes finishers before Henry, but his was a multi-faceted magnificence that reimagined the role of centre-forward entirely. If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, Henry ought to be pretty much two-dimensional at this rate.


Bhavs
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I’m sorry, but if you don’t think Thierry Henry is the greatest player ever to play in the Premier League, then football really isn’t for you.

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1) Eric Cantona
But there can only be one King. A Premier League without Eric Cantona does not bear thinking about. He won the last First Division and properly started his England journey four months before the top flight was repackaged, yet still feels intrinsically Premier League.

From scoring the first hat-trick to being one of only nine outfield foreigners to feature on the opening weekend, Cantona is unmistakably woven into the patchwork of the league’s very beginnings. He inspired its greatest side to four titles in five years and provided moments that became instant folklore, be it through karate kicks or impudent chips.

“Many people have justifiably acclaimed Cantona as a catalyst who had a crucial impact on our success while he was with the club, but nothing he did in matches meant more than the way he opened my eyes to the indispensability of practice,” Ferguson once said. “Practice makes players.” And players like Cantona made history, memories and an awful lot of fans fall in love.

Matt Stead

Old Sins have Long Shadows

I just stumbled on an article written by Femi Adesina while he was at the Sun about the newly appointed Chief of Staff to PMB, Prof. Gambari.

The article was penned at a time when the Niger Delta leaders were up in arms against the appointment of Prof. Gambari as the head of the planned Niger-Delta conference due to his comments while at the UN on the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Prof. Gambari had then referred to the dramatis personae as 'common criminals'.

So, when the administration of Late Musa Yar'adua decided to appoint him as the Chairman of the conference, all hell literally broke loose with many would-be attendees planning a massive showdown. One even promised the scholarly Professor, a good slap and hiding to boot.

But you see, this isn't the point of this article. The real point of it, were the words so beautifully penned by Femi Adesina (yes the same one!) on the issue at the time. I have taken time to reproduce copiously, the major parts of the 12th paragraph (see full article attached below).

In the 12th paragraph, he wrote: '... when you are we on a slave's errand, do it as a freeborn", another Yoruba saying. Gambari enslaved himself to please his paymasters. Now, 13 years later, the shackles are still tied round his neck, threatening to asphyxiate him. WHAT AN ETERNAL LESSON FOR FAWNING, BOOTLICKING GROVELLERS TO LEARN. OLD SINS INDEED HAVE LONG SHADOWS.'

Intriguingly, this was written barely 12 years ago. Now, Mr. Femi has apparently forgotten about the words, 'eternal lesson' and apt message he put out. I hope those shackles don't asphyxiate him.

P.S: Prof. Gambari did finally opt out of the position due to the public outcry.

Copies

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The History of Dreadlocks

BY KNOTTY EMX
The following blog excerpt contains an overview of the history of dreadlocks by Knotty EmX. Reprinted with permission.


The first known examples of the hairstyle date back to ancient Egypt, where dreadlocks appeared on Egyptian artifacts. Mummified remains of ancient Egyptians with dreadlocks have even been recovered from archaeological sites.

The Old Testament also recounts the tale of Samson and Delilah in which a man's potency is directly linked to 'the seven locks on his head' and according to Roman accounts, the Celts were described to have 'hair like snakes' Germanic tribes, Greeks and the Vikings are all said to have worn dreadlocks too.

Rastafarianism however is something entirely separate. It was born in the 1930s when Ras Tafari was crowned emperor of Ethiopia. When the emperor was forced into exile during an invasion, guerrilla warriors swore not to cut their hair until the emperor was reinstated. The religion resonated with the ideologies of the day, for example socialism, Marxism, nationalism and black power. It was therefore, seen as a threat to Christianity and came under attack by the authorities that tried to suppress the 'Rasta' movement and imprisoned those who possessed 'ganja'. Rastafarians smoked cannabis because they thought it prompted a clearer state of well - being. Their dreadlocks were thought to be disgusting and frightening, hence the term 'dread' which was later reclaimed by the 'Rasta' community.

The hairstyle was later brought into mainstream culture through the worldwide success of reggae artist Bob Marley. Sporting locks himself, he prompted an international interest in the style, and the anti establishment philosophy of Rastafarian culture.

Dreadlocks became increasingly popular and there are many reasons in various cultures for wearing them. They can be an expression of deep religious or spiritual convictions, a manifestation of ethnic pride. They can make a political statement, or simply be a fashion preference.

This essay on the history of dreadlocks is written by our own Knotty Vic Dicara, from the hardcore bands Beyond, Inside Out with Zack de la Rocha and 108. Reprinted with permission

In Igbo land, it is believed that children born dada are of spiritual origin — the dark side — and are possessed because their mothers visited shrines and made pacts with deities to conceive them.
And I am dada.
I should be furious. I should claw my way into my mother’s grave just to ask her why; but if I ever find the stomach to do the excavation, it would only be to embrace her and tell her how much I miss her. Why? Because dada is just a type of hair that is naturally and untidily matted.
The word ‘dada’ also refers to children born with that kind of hair and, though it’s of Yoruba origin, the sentiments around it are more dominant in Igbo land. The hair is similar to dreadlocks and is tough to comb. That’s probably why the bearers are sometimes called dreads — but not in Igbo land.
The Igbo people call children with dada ‘ezenwa’, meaning ‘child king’. One could argue that this is because the toughness of the hair denotes resilience, which a king should exude, or that it is because the hair most times sits over the head like a crown.
The reason behind the name, however, resides in the so-called ‘spiritual origin’, which apparently gives a dada immeasurable wealth and success etc; and a mother making a pact with a deity means her dada child is under that god’s protection and has been destined for great things that would favour the schemes of that god.
Hence, the Igbo people observe many traditional rules and beliefs when dealing with a dada.
The most important of them is the ritual performed before clearing a dada’s hair. The hair must be cut by a chief priest (this means a jujuist in Igbo Land), but since the advent of Christianity in Nigeria, most parents would rather employ the prayers of Catholic priests. The ceremony also entails calling friends and family over and treating them to a nice feast after the shaving.
Dadas whose hair is cut without the proper ceremony are believed to die within three days after the shaving. Even so, there have been cases of those who survived after being shaved without the ritual. My parents were not very superstitious, hence did not observe the tradition, but I survived, although my dada had to be cut three times for normal hair to start growing.
Prior to the shaving, touching a dada’s hair, whether to feel its roughness, to scold the wearer by pulling at it, or to comb it, can be tempting considering that it looks unusual; but that would only make the child sick — unless of course you are the mother. Why, because only the mother can touch the hair without making the dada sick. That you are the father does not count.
However, if you could not resist touching the hair or you mistakenly touched it, you must give the child money or tie a cowry to his hair to stop him from becoming sick. That is why most dadas carry a good number of cowries on their hair, the number representing the many or few times their hair was touched by someone other than their mothers.
The cowries, I think, rank among the reasons dadas do not comb their hair; that is, along with the difficulty that comes with combing something so tangled up. But most Igbo folks believe the hair is left unkempt because dadas are considered to be the Samsons of our time. Combing or cutting their hair without the proper ritual would only alter their grand destinies.
Dadas are sometimes also called ‘ogbange’, meaning the reincarnated. Most Igbo communities believe they are the reincarnations of some great men and women, jujuists, and even deities.
These rules and beliefs about dadas make them live in isolation through their childhood as other children point fingers at them and avoid them, whispering, “He’s possessed. Ogbange…”
While this can be damaging to a child’s psychology, it can also give the child some sense of security, since the stigmatisation is as a result of fear and not disdain. But it should be noted that fear can stir violence. Thus, that sense of security becomes an illusion.
These are just children born with hair most communities in Nigeria aren't comfortable with. Do they deserve such a damaging childhood?

This kind judgment before the governor sign it might take long and at the end those guy will be waiting n thier sell and end up a pastor .

Is pregnant?

SortOut:
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doggedfighter:
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oz4real83:
The major opposition party in Nigeria always work at cross purposes with the ruling party even when the ruling party is carry out laudable policies or programmes. Almajiri issue is one issue I would have loved to see PDP support APC in finding solutions to but unfortunately, they will always want to use every opportunity to show themselves as better alternative. APC would've also done same if they were in oppostion. We need to scrap these parties, they can't help us.

is it the party we are to scrap or the people orientation ? Cos if u create another party same set of people will join it .

Op how old are you ?