Who was your childhood footballing idol?

[ILS]

Lineker...my whole bedroom was a shrine to him and I owned every bit of merchandise with him on...including a shit board game that still to this day makes no sense and a soccer video of him in some random park teaching kids what to do.

I also loved Van Basten.

 

[VegasII]

Gazza.

 

[dontcallme]

Being an overweight defender who loved fair play my idol was Gary Mabbutt. Just loved the guy.

When messing around pretending to turn players etc it was Peter Ndlovu.

 

[BIGSMITHY]

Spurs - Glenn Hoddle
All time - Marco Van Basten

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

Emlyn Hughes and John Toshack.

Don't ask

 

[Shea]

Van Basten stands out to me

When I was first old enough to actually watch football and take an interest in it my favourite Spurs player was Chris Waddle, he and Gazza were really the only star players we had that season

In the same year England played in the 1988 European Champs and pretty much flopped horribly (I was 6 I believe), I remember supporting Ireland more after they beat England and were slightly more competitive but still both went out in the group stage

But it was Van Basten who stole the show - his goal in the final is to this day my all time favourite goal

I remember going to Majorca with my family very shortly afterwards and my dad bought me one of them bootleg football shirts from the market stall with Van Basten 12 on the back (the gold fish looking orange with white flecks kit they wore that year)

After that I used to watch him on my granddads sky box playing for AC Milan and whenever I kicked the ball around at school or in the garden I would pretend to be Van Basten (before that it had been Waddle)

I suppose after that there was Gazza and Lineker, to a lesser extent Sheringham and as a young teen it was Klinsmann

but after that I never really had an idol, I just loved the team. I suppose that comes with age, although that is the wonderful thing about Harry Kane. The best compliment I can give him is that watching him play for spurs makes me, a 34 year old man, feel like I did watching the likes of Waddle, Van Basten and Jurgen play when I was a kid

 

[only1waddle]

Waddle.. Obviously

 

[Chimbo1]

Waddle & Hoddle and Gazza & Lineker! My bedroom walls were covered head to toe in posters from Match and Shoot and the odd match programme

 

[Chimbo1]

Let's all play 'Guess the age of the poster'

 

[Shea]

Let's all play 'Guess the age of the poster'

You're old enough to have seen Hoddle play so I assume you're about 38

 

[Mr Pink]

Hoddle, Maldini and more recently Zidane.

 

[Syn_13]

Roberto Baggio, followed by Del Piero. Loved Zidane too, despite his silly headbutt in the 2006 WC.

 

[Ionman34]

I was thinking about this earlier, who did you pretend to be when you were playing football as a youngster?

For me it was davie Cooper, a wand of a left foot and sadly taken from us well before his time.

Hoddle. I was a midfielder and tried to emulate him when I played.

I ended up as a Civil Engineer, so my success rate was questionable.

 

[NeverRed]

Gazza, George Weah, Davids, Klinsmann, Sheringham...


Others of note, probably yelled out during play in different scenarios (football of course)!:

Papin, Van Basten, Batistuta, Totti, Schillachi, Lentini

Announcing certain types of goal attempt: Yeboah, Asprilla, Beckham, Roberto Carlos

During tekkers: Zidane, Seedorf, Ginola, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Denilson, Djalminha

 

[archiewasking]

Steve Archibald. Pat Jennings. And Steve Perryman. No non Spurs heroes for me, if they didn't play for my beloved club, they were not worthy of my adulation.

 

[Cornpattbuck]

Sheringham, Shearer and Maldini. Oh, and annoyingly Bergkamp.

 

[goughie1966]

An odd one for me..... Stan Bowles. He was the first player that got me interested in football as a child.

 

[aliyid]

Mainly Teddy Sherigham for me interlinked with moments of Darren Anderton.... Oh, and Nayim (any excuse to shoot from the halfway line )

 

[dirtyh]

platini
socrates/falcao/zico


gutted that platini turned out to be a bit of a tool tbh. what a player.

 

[Cavehillspur]

Maradona that is all.