106: Tugay, Blackburn Rovers, Merlin’s F.A. Premier League 04 Official Sticker Collection, Autograph Edition

This week Mat Jolin-Beech proves that age is but a number with a look at one of the Premier League’s oldest goalscorers. Our more regular readers may have noticed we love a cheeky bit of self-referencing but it is merely coincidental that we have already covered six of the top ten list in previous posts. It’s almost as if a collection of ageing football fans with increasingly dodgy knees like to big up those who defied such inevitabilities. Over to Mat.

Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter as the BBC loves to say) throws. up some good stats. Usually with a clickbait title, you’ll never recognise this Manchester United treble winner for example, or some nice infographic as the media types love to say. In the wake of Chelsea’s epic draw with Manchester City where Thiago Silva, the grand old man of the Blues’ defence/grizzled centre half/veteran centre back, depending on your favoured cliché, grabbed one of the goals Transfermarkt, via a suggested for you Facebook post, threw up the following into my feed: Top Ten Oldest PL Goalscorers in History.

Windass (Hull City)
Giggs (Man U)
Silva (Chelsea)
Pearce (West Ham)
Alexander (Burnley)
Kerimoglu (Blackburn)
Harford (Wimbledon)
Speed (Bolton Wanderers)

Quite a list with some greats of the game on there, but, amid the aged West Ham players, one of the two Blackburn Rover’s OAPs graded my attention. Who was Kerimoglu? The answer to who this man is: Tugay. Penny dropped.

The goal, for those interested in such trivia, was in a 2008/09 clash with Portsmouth at Fratton Park which ended in a 3-2 loss. He retired at the end of that season but remains a cult hero - not only for Rovers’ fans but also to many fans of football. The Turk won 94 caps for his country and represented his nation at Euro ’96, Euro 2000 and the World Cup in Japan and South Korea in 2002.

His stats don’t back up just how good he was. 34 goals in 279 games for Galatasaray. four in three for Glasgow Rangers and only eleven in 233 for Blackburn Rovers. And yet, he is probably an underrated and forgotten gem of a player. This is backed up by some of his fans from within the game. The midfielder, who could play in a deep role, a more traditional middle-or-the-park midfielder, or as a more attacking player, was highly rated. Gheorghe Hagi, the Romanian midfielder, rated him as one of the finest midfielders in Europe. 

Even the great Sir Alex Ferguson was a fan of Tugay. In 2006, when the midfielder was 35, the Scot said he’d be the ideal player for the Red Devils, only if he was ten years younger. The Blackburn manager at the time, Mark Hughes, who is also on the golden oldies list, added if Tugay was a decade younger, he’d be playing for Barcelona. And that was peak Pep Barca. He’s not wrong.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

N/A: Chris Kamara, Sheffield United, Chris Kamara’s Street Soccer, Midas Games

Image
In November 1972 the arcade game Pong made its debut and the gaming industry was born. While not the first attempt to make some computer pixels do not very much for the amusement of the masses it was by far the most commercially successful and, by the end of the decade, the first ever football game was unleashed on the world in the form of NASL Soccer. Judging by the YouTube footage it seemed to involve lots of brightly coloured stick men over hitting through balls and running in the opposite direction to oncoming forwards which may well be what the likes of Trevor Francis , Johan Cruyff and Gerd Muller were getting up to over in the US at the time. Throughout the 1980s the games became more realistic and a host of star players and managers put their names on products of variable quality. Peter Shilton’s Handball Maradona (not that he is anyway bitter about being out jumped by a midget) gave youngsters the opportunity to fulfil their goalkeeping fantasies in a range of scenarios with r
Read more

269: Trifon Ivanov, Bulgaria, USA ’94 World Cup, UK and Eire Edition

Image
The 1994 FIFA World Cup in the USA was my introduction to football and, nearly thirty years later, probably the international tournament I remember most fondly despite the fact that I realistically don’t remember too much about it. I can attest to having witnessed Ray Houghton’s wonder goal/flukey lob in the Republic of Ireland’s shock victory over Italy as it was the centrepiece of a First Holy Communion celebration my family was attending. The joy and shock experienced by the predominantly Irish and Italian guests crowded around what seemed like the world’s biggest telly spilled over into the garden for all of us kids present and led to an inevitable kickabout. A few weeks later the quarter finals coincided with a primary school barbecue which, again, saw lots of people crowded around a telly watching Italy take on Spain . I remember very little about the game as my primary focus was the kickabout in the school playground and trying to digest ropey veggie burgers but one parent said
Read more

138: Gennaro Gattuso, Italy, Topps Match Attax Trading Card Game, England Collector Binder

Image
We are finally responding to a request from the excellent Anglo Italian Pod for a post on a member of Italy’s victorious 2006 World Cup squad. Mat Jolin-Beech may have already covered Francesco Totti and missed out on the opportunity to cover Alessandro Del Piero or Marco Materazzi but there were a host of exceptional footballers he could have chosen from their inspirational captain Fabio Cannavaro to the impossibly handsome Mauro Camoranesi. This blog being what it is though Mat has decided to focus on a loveable shithouse and his time in Scotland. We hope this does the trick lads. This is the first that may end up being a series of pieces from me with the theme “I forgot they played there” and the opening salvo in this possible theme is Gennaro Gattuso. The midfield hardman is synonymous with AC Milan where, in no particular order, he claimed two Champions League titles, the Coppa Italia, two Serie A winner’s medals, two Italian Super Cups, two UEFA Super Cups, and a FIFA Club
Read more