Another international break means yet another pointlessly irrelevant episode of Talk From The Top Flight. If you haven’t listened to this episode yet then, firstly, what have you been doing? Secondly, you can listen here.
If you’ve already listened but want a clear idea of how and why this team made it as our Worst Ever Foreign Premier League XI:
Goalkeeper – Massimo Taibi (Manchester United)
Who the f**k else could we have had?
Right Back – Andrea Silenzi (Nottingham Forest)
The problem with not being totally in charge is that, like Steve Bleasdale, occasionally you get selection headaches like this one. The ‘wise’ Chris Darwen said we had to include Forest’s hapless Italian striker somewhere. Luckily the best right back option we had after much head scratching was Raul Bravo so the horrendous Silenzi got the nod there. He’s as likely to score there as anywhere else, honestly…
Centre Back – Claudio Cacapa (Newcastle United)
How can a former Ligue 1 winning captain be part of this XI? Easy. He was awful. This was a man that struggled to contain Kenny Miller at Derby and was pretty much directly responsible for four of the Rams’ eleven points in 2007/08. He was so bad he couldn’t even get past Fabricio Coloccini in the 2008/09 when Coloccini was as bad as Cacapa. With the turning circle of an oil tanker and the speed of one too, he was completely out of place and out of his depth in the Premier League.
Centre Back – Igor Stepanovs (Arsenal)
Better people may have been shown up by worse players than Yorke and Cole at Old Trafford but my word none of them were ever as incompetent as Igor Stepanovs. In the worst example of player power of all time, the Latvian was given a two year contract by Arsene Wenger based on a joke some of the Arsenal stars were playing on the shockingly uptight Martin Keown. The punchline came when Wenger played him and he made Pascal Cygan look like Paolo Maldini.
Left Back – Andrea Dossena (Liverpool/Sunderland)
One of the requisites for being included this team was that it helped if you were crap at more than one team. Step forward Andrea Dossena. He may have chipped van der Sar and Casillas in the space of four days or so but for the other 361 he was a Liverpool player he was trash. He wasn’t much better at Sunderland and then hardly useful at Leyton Orient. He also got accused of stealing from Harrods or something which is quite funny.
Centre Midfield – Eric Djemba-Djemba (Manchester United/Aston Villa)
The Cameroonian Roy Keane. He was like Keane in the fact that he was a human. And that’s where the similarity ends. He was so bad that he even bombed at Villa. WHO HAD GAVIN MCCANN!
Centre Midfield/Captain – Christian Poulsen (Liverpool)
A player so bad he made me literally furious, Poulsen was everything Liverpool didn’t want in a Mascherano replacement. He was also, according to Dean, a “sour-faced p***k” when he went to Tesco.
Right Wing – Bebe (Manchester United)
A transfer of convenience shall we say. There isn’t much argument to be had here about this choice from Chris. Bebe was terrible but has somehow forged out a respectable career despite having never been scouted by Sir Alex before signing. Two league appearances were plenty to get him shunted out ASAP.
Striker – Ali Dia (Southampton)
Do I really need to explain this one?
Striker – Lee Dong Gook (Middlesbrough)
Beating out Jozy Altidore by virtue of having never actually scored a goal, Lee was part of that lethal Boro team that included Mido, Tuncay, Aliadiere and Afonso Alves and was the worst striker I may have ever seen. Balls bounced off him, birds would land on him thinking he was a tree and he was generally a bit s**t.
Left Wing – Savio Nesereko (West Ham United)
Quite what possessed West Ham to pay £9 million on Savio is still unknown (answers on a postcard please). Whatever it was, the poor boy absolutely did not show it. Making the signings of Benni McCarthy, Mido and Ilan seem ingenious, Savio bumbled and stumbled his way through Premier League football before being sold to Fiorentina. Last I heard, he was in trouble in the German fourth tier or something.
Manager – Remi Garde (Aston Villa)
Our description of Remi Garde’s time in charge at Villa was basically a petulant teenager asked to clean the house. “What do you want me to do about it?”. Sauntering in to save the day from France, we heard great things about Remi. Until we all realised that this was a man in a permanent state of given up. He barely lasted past January and may have won two games at most. Oh to be a Villa fan.
Agree with our choices? Tweet @TalesFromTTF and tell us your worst foreign Premier League XI now!