Hollywood casting agents are generally American, therefore they tend to prefer sports where you have to transport an oval piece of pig into an end zone and have to cure Downs syndrome in order to gain yards to do it, or something like that. As such, I'd feel a bit rude to cruelly chastise them about their choice of leading men who are also former footballers, but I'm going to do it anyway. Plus, Guy Ritchie set the wheels in motion on this one, and he's English, so fuck him. It's true that Vinnie Jones was a pretty aggressive dude when it came to randomly hacking better players than him down on the pitch, or biting off people's noses for no good reason, but he just doesn't look that hard. Or more accurately, he does look hard, he just doesn't look very interesting. The guy looks like your average doorman (or maybe a wax work of a doorman, which I admit is fairly creepy) and his only convincing performance so far was slamming someone's head in a car door, which I'm fairly sure Kermit the Frog could carry menace into. The guy wasn't even convincing in Mean Machine, where he played a footballer for fuck's sake. Hollywood could probably have ended up with a good hundred players more suited to villain roles than Vinnie, but here's twenty they really should have gone with.
#20. Carsten Jancker
Potential roles - Evil German terrorist henchman, evil Nazi henchman, basically anything to do with being German and looking hard. Also, maybe an ogre.
If you're cursed to be born with a surname that rhymes with "wanker" then you'd better look ridiculously hard if you don't want to be called on it every day of your life. Thankfully for Carsten, he looks like someone who got thrown out of the military for being too intimidating. Granted, he's German and so may not have had to worry about this in the first place but I like to think the simple joys of calling someone a wanker are universal. I doubt anyone dared to point the rules of play yard poetry out to Carsten, though. It probably took serious balls to point out that his name rhymes with tanker and that they'd like permission to call him that if it's at all possible because y'know, you're quite big, Sir.
There is the danger that he'd ruin movies by just being too scary to be able to imagine a plucky hero managing to face him without wetting himself. If Hollywood ever wants to make an alternative history film where Hitler got the master race right then they should definitely put a call in to Carsten, though it's hard to imagine the actual war bit would last much longer than the Allies raising a white flag on the sight of him. A post war movie where the world is persecuted by massive scary looking people with names like Jens Schrouchebag though? Box office gold.
#19. Anderson
Potential roles - Ghetto boy gone bad, sass mouthed villain.
For some reason I think Anderson has this killer nonchalance about him. Not in a hip way, more in a "fuck, this guy would shoot me and everyone I care about without even stopping to think about it" way. I think it's that open mouthed facial expression he always pulls after a tackle. He looks like he's just done something really, really terrible and he really, really doesn't seem to give a shit about it. Whoever just got tumble dried to death deserved it, obviously.
Too much stuff he could do in Hollywood. Mainly involving shooting shit, a lot. Then eventually being apprehended by some wise cracking twat. For the moment the only wise cracking twat he has to deal with is Rio Ferdinand. I would start thinking about the movies.
#18. Fabrizio Ravanelli
Potential roles - Post apocalyptic gangster, hipster vampire, super villain, that dude from the Da Vince code.
There's something inherently cool, yet sinister about young people with grey hair. While it's scientifically probably a genetic weakness due to a lack of pigment or something, I still say they're not to be trusted. You can't argue with the "I bet that guy is about to do something awesome" cool of it, though. I can't really decide where that would stop, cool on a twenty something, maybe less cool when little Fabrizio kept getting arrested on suspicion of being a paedophile at school.
It's not like any real acting is required either, I mean the guy is called the white feather. He both looks and sounds like a comic book villain already, albeit not a very tough one on the ears. Just wait until the super hero actually ran into him, though.
"There's a new menace in town, his name is the white feather, probably the toughest yet"
"Well he doesn't sound very tough"
"I know, but trust me, this guy is 100% legit badass"
It's inevitable that kind of underestimation would lead to a dead Batman and the White Feather running off with his cape over his head.
Fuck.
#17. Eric Cantona
Potential roles - Anything that requires an actor who is snooty, French and villainous, which in Hollywood is a regular occurrence.
Hollywood really missed the boat on this one, or at least they missed following the boat like seagulls hoping Eric would accept a Hollywood role. Eric is actually a legit actor now, it's just that as his IMDB profile proves, he hasn't really been busy with anything other than beach football until recently. That's about ten years of good evil Eric we've missed out on. You would have thought that had anyone had seen him strutting around football pitches with his collar turned up, pouting every time he did something good would have thought "This guy is such a complete and utter twat, we have to put him in a movie!", but apparently not. Okay, I will grant that him being genuinely batshit insane and a tad violent would probably have made him harder to work with than Val Kilmer, but that would have been a risk I was willing to take.
I mean it's pretty obvious Sascha Baron Cohen based his Talladega nights character almost entirely on Eric, so we might as well have the real thing.
#16. Alexi Lalas
Potential roles - Barbarian, Gladiator nemesis, someone Mel Gibson would get to kill in something.
This one is lost on us too. Alexi has depressingly transformed from his "HOLY SHIT WHO IS THAT GUY?!" persona at the 1994 world cup into a respectable looking man in a suit who talks about David Beckham a lot. It's a frustrating change from the days when strikers would have half a mind on the game and half a mind worrying about the fact that a guy who looked like he was the enforcer to the enforcers of some American Mid-West biker gang was marking them. That and the world cup pre-match handshakes which I imagine must have been a bit "hello", "hello", "hello", "that's weird" (Cobi Jones), "hello", "fuck!" , "hello"... Personally, I console myself with the thought that the reason Alexi is talking about Becks being injured so often is that he probably mercilessly beat him with a tyre iron for not selling enough shirts.
Alexi Lalas leading a barbarian horde. That's realism you can't buy, no make up required. Even Russell Crowe would have thought twice about wading into that one.
#15. Nobby Stiles
Potential roles - A sadistic redcoat, hooligan, beating up Halle Berry.
The problem with Vinnie Jones and gritty Hollywood villains in general is that they're too manicured. Real gritty people who would put a glass through your face because you don't have a lighter when they ask you for one do not have perfect teeth and olive skin. That's normally because in the course of dishing out relentless beatings to people, you tend to end up getting punched in the face a lot yourself. It's people like Nobby that should be getting these roles. The people with the "shit, if that's how he keeps his face, what will he do to mine?!" aura about them. In Nobby's case, he probably also had short man syndrome, which would make the answer to the above question, hit you in the face with a shovel several hundred times, until it breaks and he storms off to B&Q to demand a refund. It's no wonder players were scared of him when you consider he played back when you could actually kick people. Those players should just be happy you weren't allowed to try and stab eyes out with the corner flag, in all fairness.
#14. Ferenc Puskas
Potential roles - Dracula, Dracula and Dracula.
There are several realisations that hit you when you watch videos of Ferenc Puskas. One would be that he's one of the greatest players of all time, then you realise that he did that while being totally one footed, then you think that must be the best foot of all time. I still think the most important realisation of all is that he was doing all this while looking exactly like fucking Dracula!
It's not like we're talking about a passing resemblance here. He looks like the dark prince. Surely it was a cruel joke that he ended up playing in white for Madrid. Although I'm sure Franco needed him there to fuck shit up off the field as well as on it. It raises plenty of questions, if they'd played under floodlights would Puskas have turned into a bat and started flapping around the lights with Alfredo Di Stefano shouting "Get down you useless twat" at him? Come to think of it Di Stefano did look kind of like a dark minion himself. Not nearly cool enough to get anywhere near this list but maybe someone Puskas would have chucked infront of a stake to save his ass. If there were a string of 50's murders in Madrid that are unsolved I think I know who they should pay a visit to. Even though I'd just leave it, personally.
#13. Eduardo Da Silva
Potential roles - Something in a movie about a giant Prince destroying New York would work I guess, also any 70's drug lord.
I will grant you that Eduardo did not look too badass lying on the floor screaming in pain with his foot hanging off the other week. You have to cut the guy some slack though, his fucking foot was hanging off! Shit like that would make Steven Seagal wince.
The point with Eduardo is that he's gone through life looking like a giant version of Prince and noone has been able to give him enough shit for it for him to want to change his image. The only possible explanations for this is that he's either that much of a badass that noone dares mention it to him, or that he's got thicker skin than Godzilla. Either way it's pretty badass, especially in a Croatia team where everyone else looks pretty sensible (apart from Vedran Corluka, obviously) and then there is a giant version of Prince strutting around upfront. It's just awesome.
There's really no limit to what someone like him could do in a 70's biopic revival. The kind of gangster so bad he looks ridiculous but distinctive enough that people shit themselves at the very mention of a giant Prince controlling the coke industry. Or at least they would if Prince had been around at the time. Then of course he could do the Prince biopic, if they could find enough 7 foot tall actors to make it realistic, that is.
#12. Gennaro Gattuso
Potential roles - Any number of angry unkempt people, spaghetti westerns, maybe could even stretch to playing a loveable rogue.
Italian men are stereotypically a pretty classy looking lot. Even the ones who look like they would feast on your spleen without batting an eyelid at least look like they'd do it while wearing a nice designer suit. Their footballers normally reflect this and it's for this reason that it's always slightly surprising to see Gattuso on the pitch for either Italy or a club of the fashion capital of the world, looking like he's just got back from beating up the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I will also propose that the look helps his game quite a bit too. If you are Francesco Totti, the last thing you want is some homeless guy chasing you around a football pitch asking for change. That's especially a problem when you don't even have any pockets to keep change in even if you wanted to carry some for the bus home. The natural thing to do would be to just give him that ball you are carrying and hope he leaves you the fuck alone.
Gattuso's career playing psycho deadbeats could have been great. He'd be great playing it straight on account of the fact that it would be great to see him punch Tom Hanks in the face for trying to force him to make something of himself and he'd be great at comedy, on account of the fact that it'd be great to see him beat Chris Tucker to death.
#11. Tomas Gravesen
Potential roles - Anything in a fantasy flick, corrupt yet hard as nails cop, pirate, biker, random guy who appears for the sole purpose of beating the shit out of someone.
Gravesen is not the kind of guy you cross the road to avoid. He's more the kind of person who makes you change direction instantly and run for your life in the hope that he doesn't see you. You'd have to be mental to try and start a fight with someone who looks like him. Either that or you'd have to be Robinho, but I assume Robinho wouldn't have bothered trying to start a training ground fight with him if the almost worthy of this list man-hulk, Julio Baptista wasn't there to back him up. If you punched him, he would probably eat your fist before shoving his fist somewhere unpleasant.
Actually, come to think of it, they should have given him Vinnie Jones' career instead. Imagine that car door scene in Lock Stock with Tomas Gravesen in it. If it's time for a change of underwear, you imagined it right.
#10. Frank Worthington
Potential roles - Anything that requires someone sleazy yet deadly. Bond villains, Guy Ritchie gang bosses, Costa Del Sol crime films, whatever.
It must have been distracting playing against Frank Worthington knowing that he's probably eyeing up your wife in the stands. I mean it wouldn't bother you if it was Luke Chadwick doing it, but Frank Worthington has enough spare sleazy charm to take her off you without breaking a sweat. He also looks like he knows people that will break your legs if you take issue with him on the matter. That's what takes him well under the cut for this. He's the playboy you can't touch. He's feeling up girls in a mob run casino and no one is doing anything about it. If anyone did, he'd probably have a gun inside his jacket, open up the jacket and do that smug "You don't wanna try anything dickhead" nod towards it. You might well ignore that, but you wouldn't ignore the 20 massive dudes with ripped physiques and even more ripped faces glaring at you. He really does look like the ultimate bastard.
Ok, so he couldn't do any Vinnie Jones roles, but at least give me the simple pleasure of watching him tell Vinnie what to do in films. Even if Vinnie still doesn't really look bad enough to be one of Frank Worthington's henchmen.
#9. Paul Breitner
Potential roles - Anything set between about 1974 and 1975.
Seriously, just look at him. Are you going to suggest that someone who dares walk around like that couldn't kill you in about forty five different ways if he wanted to? If you are I would suggest that you never approach a German man with an afro because it's quite obvious that if you piss him off, you will die. Maybe more than once, probably in increasingly painful ways, I don't really want to think about it. The reason he was such a good penalty taker was probably that no one dared try and actually save his penalties. He is clearly a bad, bad motherfucker.
Hollywood? Come on, clearly you could find a use for a white, German and dangerous version of Samuel L Jackson. Paul Breinter screaming parables at you would rank somewhere between terrifying and fear related seizure inducing.
#8. Graeme Souness
Potential roles - Begbie from Trainspotting.
Shaving off the 'stache and getting a sensible haircut was probably the worst career move Souness ever made. As it transpired he went to try and sort out Newcastle's dressing room full of utter nobheads looking like an quite stern geography teacher. As I could have told him before he committed career suicide, it didn't work out. It would have been an entirely different matter if he still had the 'stache and wild hair at the time. Simply for the fact that it made him look like a total fucking psychopath. Instead of starting fights with team-mates on the pitch, Lee Bowyer would have been thinking "I'm glad I don't have three legs, if I did this fucker would probably break them all", Kieron Dyer would have been living in fear of his injury problems in his body potentially spreading into his brain if he crossed Souness, Craig Bellamy wouldn't have been sending gloating text messages to anyone if he'd known it would lead to his fingers getting broken in about seven places each. Yep, Souey really should have kept the image that lead to players running off the field to put on an extra pair of shin pads every time he looked at their legs.
Also, I will admit that Souey's acting range would probably have been a little limited. I'm sure there could have been stuff you could stick a raging Glaswegian who would make Robert Carlyle back away slowly, always maintaining eye contact in, though.
#7. Trifon Ivanov
Potential roles - Okay, so this one doesn't really stretch much beyond werewolves, but still....
Has there ever been any kind of scientific proof that Ivanov is actually human? I mean I appreciate the average scientist probably doesn't want to go anywhere near the dude but surely someone must have managed to pluck up the courage to drug test him through a hole in a wall at some point during his career. Actually, probably not because there's the gigantic factor of "oh shit it's a werewolf" to consider , shortly before the shit really hits the fan when the "fuck me, it isn't even dark, this werewolf looks like this all the time" issue crops up. Maybe at midnight he got even more hideous, but that doesn't really bear thinking about. He'd certainly play a more convincing werewolf than anyone in Tinseltown history though, simply because of the almost certain fact that well, he is one.
#6. Stig Tofting
Potential roles - Beating people up in horror films, beating people up in drama films, beating people up in comedies, beating people up in films where it's totally unrelated to the plot just for the sheer hell of it.
If most people saw Stig Tofting, they would expect to get beaten up. That's for a good reason because there's a good chance you would get beaten up. Stig is a legit member of Hell's Angels and has been convicted for brutally assaulting a cafe owner, see. The really disturbing thing about it is that he's a seriously dangerous man and I still think his look is worse than his bite. Bear in mind that this is a guy who's bite involves repeatedly slamming people's heads into tables. It's just that he looks like he should be thinking about what he wants to order for his last meal while doing endless press-ups on death row, only occasionally stopping to punch the walls and threaten to violently rape the guards. Stay away kids, always judge a book by it's cover, especially when it's cover is a fucking terrifying as this.
Film wise, I can't really think of anything he could do that didn't involve beating people up. It's not like a number of successful Hollywood actors don't make a stunningly good living from beating people up, so I don't see this as a problem.
#5. Giuseppe Bergomi
Potential roles - Lots and lots of mafia films. Maybe the odd threatening guy in a rom-com.
Is there anything about Bergomi that suggests he doesn't kill people for a living? Well, apart from the fact that he played football for a living, anyway? It would hardly shock me if he took mafia contracts on as a recreational activity, just because hacking at Marco Van Basten didn't fully satisfy his blood lust. There's just no way I'd answer the door to Bergomi, whatever he was saying. Even if I hadn't eaten for a week and he was claiming only to be there to offer me a sandwich that door would stay closed. Ultimately, I'd realise that there's no way opening the door doesn't eventually lead to my head being in a vice. Screw it, I'd rather just starve, it's probably less painful than what it looks like he'd do to me.
His film manifesto would be hugely impressive. He'd be the most intimidating mafia guy ever. Joe Pesci wouldn't throw wise cracks at the guy, if he wouldn't, everyone else had better be cowering in fear.
#4. Carlos Valderrama
Potential roles - Drug lord, evil pimp
You know when you're playing any computer game that allows you to create a character? If yes, chances are you'll know that you inevitably end up making the craziest looking dude ever. You'll give him crazy facial hair, an even crazier hair style and sit back and think "Man, that guy is a fucking bad ass motherfucker". Yeah? Well if you don't do that and just try to make someone that looks like you then I can't really relate to that. Assuming you do then you should be hitting the realisation right about now that Carlos Valderrama is that guy you create in those games. Except he's a fucking real life actual person.
I mean come on, that's ridiculously awesome. He had the balls to look like we all secretly want to look like and pulled it off. Obviously, most of us are ruined by having jobs that prevent us from looking totally fucking awesome all the time, so that gets in the way. It's not an obstacle for Carlos and how he revels in it.
Hollywood? Don't sweat it, whatever he turns up in everyone would think "Man, this guy is a total badass", because he looks like one. Being Colombian he may or may not be a legit badass, he's realistically not as bad as say, Rene Higuita but he looks cooler and really, isn't that the only thing that counts? That he can look in the mirror every day and say to himself "I am everything Abel Xavier aspires to be"?
#3. Edgar Davids
Potential roles - Bounty hunter, amazon terrorist, THE FUCKING PREDATOR!!
If you've never watched Edgar Davids play before and thought "Holy shit, that guy looks like the fucking predator!" then you're either feeling very stupid right now or are more mindful of your language than I am. Anyway, if there's the appearance of one modern day player it's worth disregarding your P's and Q's for it's Davids. The guy looked pretty badass to begin with, then he got an eye infection and cruelly had to spend the rest of his career wearing the most awesome pair of glasses ever. It's supposedly to help him with glaucoma but those glasses look equipped enough to do anything. See through crowds to tell where the ball is, use them as a ball magnet via some kind of mind trick, cause people writing bad press reports about you to spontaneously combust, anything. Plus nothing is more scary than seeing some nandrolone jacked freak chase you while wearing a pair of awesome glasses. If I were him I'd never take them off. It's not like airport security would dare to question you looking like that, anyway.
The thought of Sly Stallone spending a movie chasing down Edgar Davids is mind blowingly awesome. I had to type this bit about imagining the eventual showdown between the two without actually thinking about it because the sheer thought of it would make my brain explode. It's really that amazing.
#2. Lev Yashin
Potential roles - Anything that involves stern looks and lots of pain. This guy could have worked for years.
I am fairly sure that all current issues of bottle when taking penalties can be traced back to Lev Yashin. Someone must have won a penalty, thought "put the ball in the net from 12 yards eh? Piece of piss, want me to work a somersault in there?" and then seen Yashin. If you saw someone as big as Yashin, with a face that looks as downright ruthless as Yashin and this was backed up by him being dressed wholly in black, I am fairly sure the natural human reaction would be to shit yourself to unheard of degrees. "Wait, I have to put it past him?, fuck that, someone else can take it" If anti-Soviet movies taught me anything, it is that communists were to be feared. Massive, nasty looking commies dressed all in black? No way am I going anywhere near that. It's all kinds of intimidating rolled into one. Lev Yashin is scientifically proven to be fourteen times as scary as the New Zealand rugby team doing the haka when you're about to try and play them on your own. That is some seriously, seriously scary shit. It's no wonder he's considered the best goalkeeper ever because who the fuck is going to dare and score against him? All that and then you find out his nickname is the motherfucking black spider. Have mercy on my soul.
I don't think you need to think too much about his movie career. Big, intimidating communists dressed all in black? If you can't think of about a hundred movies for him then I'm afraid it makes you the least creative person alive. Just pray Lev Yashin never stomps into your house and demands you create something. I mean, he's dead, but that wouldn't exactly make me feel 100% safe, all things considered.
#1. Motherfucking Socrates
Potential roles - Whatever the fuck he wanted.
I don't think Socrates name ever really officially came with a "motherfucking" prefix and it actually probably makes him less awesome rather than more awesome, as it no doubt would with every other human being. I mean just look at the guy. He played football dressed like that. He was also a doctor, so it's worth noting that he was also tending to patients while looking that awesome. I mean really, the 1982 Brazil team was cool enough without him in. With him in it, it pushes them into another stratosphere of cool. So much so that you'd need to invent a new word for it. I'd try, but inventing a word to sum up how badass Socrates is would be a task far beyond my limitations. You'd need hordes of scientists and linguistic experts to even attempt something like that.
In films he could play whoever he wanted. It'd be believable, he's Socrates. If he wants to join the US army for a Vietnam movie do you think they'd bother telling him that he's not American and that he needs to cut his hair? Of course they wouldn't, it looks like he'd kill an absolute shitload of Viet-cong. Noone has ever turned down Socrates for anything. Fact
Yes, I realise I'm ripping off the premise of Cracked.com and applying it to football. That's a good site and you should read it. I also realise I'm using far too much casual swearing and that no matter how generously I throw the word motherfucking out there I will never be as cool as Samuel L Jackson, but it all felt right at the time of writing so fuck it.
Motherfuckers.
