XI Footballers Who Look Like They Played In A Bygone Age

Chris Wright

5th, December 2012

20 Comments

By Chris Wright

A salute to all the footballers out there who look like they hark from a bygone era: an era of neatly-combed and pomaded side partings, baggy shorts, broken legs being ‘run off’, lead-lined boots and sodden footballs heavy enough to compress your spine if you so much as thought about heading them…

1. Nicky Shorey

Should be sepia-toned at all times…

2. Scott Parker, Tottenham

Not only does he look like you may have caught a glimpse of him in the background of England’s 1966 World Cup celebrations, he also plays like that too…

3. Leighton Baines

Looks likes the nervous, homesick private that hides weeping in the rubble once fighting breaks out in every Second World War film you’ve ever seen…

4. Lee Clark

It says he’s 40 on his birth certificate but Clark can clearly be seen here, aged 59, managing Huddersfield to a League Cup semi-final in 1968…

5. Wayne Rooney, Man Utd

A throwback, both in footballing and evolutionary terms. Looks ridiculously like his great uncle Bernard Morrey did while playing for Newport County in 1953

6. Steven Whittaker, Rangers

Seen here celebrating Rangers’ title win in 1921…

7. Lee Cattermole

Looks (and, again, plays) like one of the squaddies that stopped shelling the scheisse out of the German trenches to play football with them in No Man’s Land on Christmas Day, 1914…

8. Jay Tabb, Reading

Looks like he pre-dates both World Wars, and comfortably…

9. Joseph Barton, QPR/Marseille

Thought to be Jack the Ripper at one time…

10. Frank Fielding, Derby

Frank remembers the good old days when he had string for a crossbar…

11. Charlie ‘Bully’ Adam, Stoke

Looks like the Victorian bare-knuckle pub pugilist you find while tracing your Scottish family tree…

(Photos: PA)