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.
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