“PEOPLE SAID I WAS MORE FOCUSED ON MODELLING AND L’OREAL – I WANTED TO PROVE THEM WRONG”

51 DAVID GINOLA

NEWCASTLE, TOTTENHAM, ASTON VILLA, EVERTON

Nearly 26 years on, David Ginola can still remember the bafflement he felt at his first press conference in English football.

Ginola had just joined Newcastle from Paris Saint-Germain for £2.5m – a considerable sum in 1995. He had reached the semi-finals of the Champions League months earlier and been targeted by Europe’s biggest clubs. He was poised to become the second Frenchman to play in the Premier League, after Eric Cantona. But not everyone was aware of his talents.

“When I arrived at the first press conference, a journalist said, ‘Can you tell us who you are?’” says Ginola, smiling as he reminisces to FourFourTwo. “In Paris, we’d won the league title, we’d won the cup twice and I’d been French player of the year. But I was completely unknown to the English press, which surprised me.

“I replied, ‘What do you mean, who am I?!’ The English press didn’t know much about French players then – now, they know everything about them. But I was a surprise for them, a discovery, that ‘Oh, this is a great player’.”

Ginola was Premier League Player of the Month just four matches into his time at Newcastle, and would become one of the biggest stars of the next few seasons – named both PFA and Football Writers’ Association Player of the Year after moving on to Tottenham in 1997.

With his good looks, musketeer locks and swashbuckling dribbling, the French left-winger stood out so much that he sometimes resembled the lone pro on the field, carving his way through a rearguard of over-matched amateurs. Few could dazzle quite like David Ginola.

THE CRUYFF U-TURN

Newcastle was not Ginola’s dream move in the summer of 1995 – initially, at least. Having helped PSG eliminate Barcelona from the Champions League, the 28-year-old looked set to link up with his childhood hero Johan Cruyff at the Camp Nou.

“I had two posters in my bedroom when I was young – one of Cruyff and one of Diego Maradona,” reveals Ginola. “Cruyff was my inspiration – the way he played, the way he behaved. I met him at a golf tournament in Tarragona, south of Barcelona, and he told me I was his priority that pre-season. Barça under Cruyff played some of the greatest football ever, so it would have been something magic.

“Everything was organised, but he said he had to get rid of two foreign players before signing me – Hristo Stoichkov and Gheorghe Hagi. They couldn’t find clubs for them, and I got a call from Cruyff saying, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t make the move’.”

Soon, Ginola discovered that Kevin Keegan wanted him at Newcastle. “I found that very attractive,” he says. “When I was about nine years old, I told my dad that I wanted to be a footballer. I said that while I was watching Liverpool vs