As you many have guessed I’m taking a bit of a break. So in the meantime whilst it’s quiet and for something to do – I am throwing down the challenge glove…

This challenge was something started via Twitter when Sweeping The Nation tweeted with this comment a few months back.

The tweet, for those of you who can’t be arsed clicking on that link is for a video from Edward (Ed) Ball and his song: “Mill Hill Self Hate Club”, which I think tickled the lower to mid end of the charts in 1996.
What was significant about the video for his song was that there were a few well known faces including a Premier League footballer.

So from the suggestion originally by Sweeping The Nation, this has now become:

Now there are rules to this – the video has to be of a player who just pops up somewhere. He doesn’t sing, but instead tries his acting chops in these three minute mini-tales…plays…? fables ? …I can’t think of the right word at the moment.

Some examples of what I’ve found below. Can you add to these ? Leave a comment.

I’ll post these in the order of the year the song was released and start with Junior Giscombe.

You remember Junior ? He had that fantastic song Mama Used To Say which was a huge hit in 1981. A few years later he released a single Do You Really (Want My Love) which was als on the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack.

The setting for the accompanying video was an indoor 5-a-side match at the local gym. Not very imaginative and reverting to type just because of the footballer they managed to get involved I think, or maybe it was because Junior was a friend or fan of this particular striker.. Who knows.

The plot for the video is that Junior is the subs bench and was pleading with his manager to get a game because there’s this girl on another bench who he wants to impress. By half time his team are 5-nil down and the boss gives these players a rollocking. A team which includes one Garth Crooks, late of Spurs at the time, now still a cub reporter at the Beeb…   As you can see from the screencap above old Garth doesn’t look too impressed at this bloke telling him what to do.

The 2nd half kicks off and Junior’s team are still getting mullered and eventually he’s given a chance.
Our hero steps onto the pitch… sorry gym floor and… well have a look for yourself:

Next we have the aforementioned Edward Ball, who was signed to Creation Records at the time and a big mate of the founder of the label Alan McGee, who you can see on the video. As well as him Ed got another mate of his to play guitar in the band. I don’t know if he actually played on the single or just appear in the video… anyway step forward Nick Heyward, late of Haircut 100 and one of the many lead singers who think they can break out on their own but end up in obscurity.

Our featured footballer this time is the Guardian reading Graeme Le Saux, who at the time was playing for the Jack Walker financed Blackburn Rovers, but a few months later moved to Chelsea.

The plot for this one is really simple – Ed is sitting in a caff (and occasionally playing with the band) waiting for his date to show. Whilst he’s there – for a good few hours – some people (McGee and then Le Saux) come and sit at the tables. Eventually his date turns up and it’s…

Now we have some bizarreness… It comes in the form of Dr. Alban (not a real doctor obviously) who you may remember from the early 90′s dance hit “It’s My Life” which was also used in those bloody (literally !) Tampax adverts. The bizarre doesn’t come from that but from another tune he did in 1999.

For this song he went the Ed Ball route and roped in some of his (Swedish) sporting pals – and what friends he keeps. In the video you will see Bjorn Borg and a footie player featured previously on F&M – Tomas Brolin.

In the clip below the good (non) Dr. Alban has hired a stretched limo and along with Borg and Brolin, they are all dressed to the nines in some white dinner jackets. Also in the video there’s some bikini clad birds in a swimming pool and err… You’d better just watch:

For this one it is back to a World Cup year (2002) and a silly decision by Keith Allen to once again flog this dead horse with a self-released tune. It was also a notable event with his daughter Lily (aged 15 at the time )making her first guest vocals and video appearance. The song, with Blur’s Dave Rowntree on drums, has a video shot in and around Soho in London. And to compete with Dr. Alban above it seems, there’s a bit of bizarreness in the form of Wayne Sleep wearing that protective gear that boxers use when in training. He can be seen pirouetting around the crowds in Carnaby Street.

The football representation in this case (because in the song there’s barely any mentions) comes in the form of that Sky Sports legendary summariser Chris “Kammy” Kamara, who is also name checked in the song.

Here now we have a 2004 video from a Spanish group who score some major points because of the player they got to appear in the video and what they got him to do.

The band is El Canto del Loco (The Song of the Madman).
In the video below it takes a nod to the Junior Giscombe clip. In this case it’s the lead singer of the band who’s at a bus station when who should walk in but Fernando Torres. He is accompanying a female (assumed to be his girlfriend) and whilst they are sitting waiting for the bus the lead singer catches the girls eye and the girl also spots him. Then they both have an out of body experience… No I’m not kidding here. Eventually the bus is ready to leave and the singer boards. We then see Torres and the girl approach the bus, Fernando goes in to kiss his video partner BUT SHE BLANKS HIM ! She must have been a clairvoyant and saw this trip that Torres took in the future.

Lastly for now and I can’t believe that I’m posting a Westlife video on here…

The premise for their pop music video – “Bop Bop Baby”… it hurts as I type that…. is that the boys are Musketeers are locked in a dungeon. There’s a girl (as always) which wanted to marry one of the boyband members – it’s not clear which, maybe all of them. But her Father is forcing her to marry the vilest man in the kingdom for cold, hard cash. That man is Duke Vincent – known more commonly to you and me as Vinnie Jones, who is well known to croon a few tunes himself.

As mentioned the lads are locked in an underground castle dungeon and singing some (slightly confusing) lyrics which really do not fit in with their situation:

“When I call you at home and he answers the phone
Or I get your machine and I don’t hear me”

Then suddenly help from outside and some unknown accomplice blows a big fecking hole in the wall, they escape, storm the wedding and proceed to beat the living crap out of Jones.
So the video does have some high points.

Those are the ones that I’ve found, but there’s got to be more out there. Do you know of any ?
If you spot any candidates please add a comment below:

Posted one last week because I expect the subject to be in the headlines very soon and this fortuitously timed entry is about another back page attention getter who’s transfer speculations has been going on as long as Arshavin’s.

Note for future self - This one is posted on transfer deadline day and one of both of these may or may not have moved before the window closed.

So today’s attempt to attract some google searches is with the very handsome Roque Santa Cruz.
Oh if only the transfer deadline was Dec 25th, the amount of puns to be had from that…

Yes I said handsome because he is. I’m not afraid to admit it.

Although I’m not the first one to openly admit a mancrush on a player, Danny Baker has already err…come out…(?…is that the right phrase for this…?) with his admiration of Berba’s good looks.

Before his Blackburn move Santa Cruz spent a good few years in the Bundesligia with Bayern and it was because of a nagging injury which put him down the pecking order at Munich which put him onto Mark Hughes’ radar when he was also googling for a bargain striker.

The Independent has an excellent article (from September 2008) in which the headline tells us of Roque’s own soft spot for Sparky…

Roque Santa Cruz: ‘Four or five clubs were interested in me, but it was Mark Hughes who made the difference’

Take a glance the CV of Roque Santa Cruz, the golden boy of Paraguayan football and Blackburn’s new No 9, and he is apparently a man who has it all, on and off the pitch. One of four sons, he grew up in a close-knit family in a hillside town outside Asuncion, made his debut for his local club, Olimpia, at 16, and by 18, in 1999, had fired his team to back-to-back titles and bagged himself his nation’s Footballer of the Year award.

Inevitably, Europe’s giants came calling for this athletic 6ft 2in striker – pop-star handsome with technical abilities every bit as easy on the eye – and he signed for Bayern Munich later that year. Between 2000 and 2005, Bayern won four Bundesliga titles, five domestic cups and, with Santa Cruz in their number, the Champions League of 2001.

Lest that were not enough, he was a cult hero with the Bayern faithful and popular throughout Germany. In 2004, he even sang on a pop record, “Ich, Roque” – a pun on the phrase “I rock” – with an upcoming band, Sportfreunde Stiller. It made the top 40 in Germany and Austria….

» Sportfreunde Stiller – Ich Roque (Audio taken from the video)

I put the lyrics through Google Translate. » Click to read.

The last bit of the song (in case anyone didn’t listen to it/read the lyrics or watch the video) has the pretty boy himself saying in Spanish (again translated):

Anyway.. to continue with the article it also says…

Until now, Santa Cruz has limited his explanation for why he left Bayern to saying he was not getting enough games. Yesterday he revealed that he had been desperate to leave for two years, and, now that he has finally done so, he believes both he and Blackburn are going places.

Ah great line…great line… *wipes tear from eye*

Later on it gives the reasons as to who it was who convinced him that the Prem was in his future, as well as the parseltongued then-Blackburn manager:

Owen Hargreaves, Santa Cruz’s long-time team-mate and good friend at Bayern, who taught him English, also advised that the Premier League was the place to be. The pair now live 10 minutes away from each other in Manchester. But Hughes’ vision really swung it.

“He told me his ideas. It was a simple decision after that,” Santa Cruz says. “He said I would get the opportunity to play. And to learn. He said this team is competitive, but that I will only help to make it more competitive. I had a good feeling. I feel fit and strong. I feel like I can do everything now.”

Santa Cruz will not divulge which other clubs he spurned to join Rovers. He knows Manchester City, who visit Blackburn tomorrow, were interested in signing him, but as he never got as far as talking to them, they were not among the rejected.

So there was a passing chance, but in the end he was attracted by the bright lights of East Lancs.

UPDATE: The transfer window is shut and he will not be moving back in with his former boss man. (Asharvin deal might or might not be done either).

As sweetSubsea on 606 so accurately put it:

1646: “Not long to go and no centre-back arriving at City. That is all we need, but Mr Hughes is so clever, he managed to sign a striker we don’t like, a midfielder we don’t need and a goalkeeper to ensure we keep killing every young talent we have at City. Well done Mr Hughes.”

This is the first post of a thread that will wander into songs by (cover your ears) and about German players...yeah I know I started with a Paraguayan, but he was in the Bundesligia... followed by some about German teams - including the national team, before finally returning to the original thread.

I can understand footballers wanting to starve off retirement, because as we’ve seen when you finally stop there is a danger of going on a downward spiral. Some are fortunate, some are forward thinking and plan ahead and either go into coaching or sit there on the couch looking at Gary’s permanent tan.

“Don’t call me Andy !” was one of those who wanted to keep turning out. Wanted to keep on knocking them in.

Other strikers who used to be in the headlines have also tried to stay on the pitch and eventually end up turning out for some 3rd Division team in the Leyland DAF Trophy. It is a sad sight and it was beginning to look like it was going that way for Cole, so it is good thing that the realisation has set it. Maybe it should have triggered before his last move because it has now left a bit of an unwanted postscript on what was a dazzling career.

But it doesn’t matter either way. Despite people’s memories of him, sadly he’s not talked about or seen in the same light as other legendary Newcastle or Man Utd strikers. The records will still show that Mr A. Cole was indeed outstanding on the field – as discussed here by the Guardian’s Rob Smyth back in February 2007.

As it seemed to happen with other strikers, when they had their face plastered all over the magazines and on the television, Andy – as he was known back then – also took to the recording studio to try out a pop career.

And as it always seemed to happen with other strikers too – it didn’t.

But mad props to you Mr Andrew for doing a rap song that had some.. interesting lyrics, but also some positive ones:

I’m sharp like a razor / Speed to amaze ya / Beat ya like Ali did Joe Frazier

“United forever / Whatever the weather / Less than a hundred per cent? Never!

“Seven-point-five mill record-maker / Rapping on the mic I’m a record-breaker / Got my kicks from hitting the net / Never from drugs: You bet!”

Also has a line in the song about saying no to racism. This was something that Andy was at the forefront. Can’t find the full lyrics but you can listen for yourself:

[See post to listen to audio] » Andy Cole – Outstanding

-> There’s obviously a video too.

-> Only a few weeks ago there were some Notts Forest fans who were campaigning to get his single into the charts. (When it was first released it failed to make the top 40.)

-> More photographs including the one above can be found in the Gallowgate Gallery

-> Show Racism The Red Card

ADDITIONAL:

The posts in the last few days were songs about footie players and this one is by a footie player.

There was a song done in Andy’s barcodes days in which his 40th goal for Newcastle was celebrated. I’m including it here because it continues the songs about… theme but because of the badness(?) (is that a word ?) of the song it means that Cole, if he does make the F&M team, it would be on the bench.

[See post to listen to audio]
» Harry Palmer – The Andy Cole Song