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Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons


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The late 90s was a truly bizarre time in Scottish Football.  The number of horrific foreign players that appeared, either on trial or on short-term contracts was diabolical. We, along with other teams in the league, must have squandered some amount of money on utter shite.  Certainly around '96/'97, just before the SPL came into play. 

Who can forget the Austrian Ant & Dec, otherwise known as Franz Resche and Mario Dorner? There was another Finnish boy around the time Valakari came over as well.  Lehtonen?   Absolute dug meat.  There'll be quite a few more that I've forgotten about as well.

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4 minutes ago, Desp said:

The late 90s was a truly bizarre time in Scottish Football.  The number of horrific foreign players that appeared, either on trial or on short-term contracts was diabolical. We, along with other teams in the league, must have squandered some amount of money on utter shite.  Certainly around '96/'97, just before the SPL came into play. 

Who can forget the Austrian Ant & Dec, otherwise known as Franz Resche and Mario Dorner? There was another Finnish boy around the time Valakari came over as well.  Lehtonen?   Absolute dug meat.  There'll be quite a few more that I've forgotten about as well.

Joni Lehtonen?

96/97 and 97/98 squads below...what a time etc.

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1703348724_ScreenShot2020-02-18at14_51_27.thumb.png.3f29706e902d477f1df063273f13c205.png

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Gunni Jonsson.  Jesus, that was a horror show.  I have absolutely no recollection of either Marko Tuomela or Mats Lundgren. 

Eric Garcin gets a pass for that free-kick against Hibs, and Shivute was just Shivute!

When was Franck Bernhard?  Was he early 2000s under Black?  He wore the no.50 shirt which infuriated me (back in those incident days, the idea of a Motherwell player wearing the no.77 or no.88 shirt would be nonsensical). 

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To be fair, we've always been littered with our fair share of obscure (shite) foreign players.

Due to my age, I only really properly started following Motherwell from the noughties onwards. The ones that stick out for me are Abel "the flask" Thermeus and Kristian Vadocz. I remember Thermeus got sent off on his debut and was never seen again. I don't remember Vadocz being that bad but he might have an unfair reputation of being worse than he was due to playing in Malpas' team. Both then pitched up in La Liga a few years after playing for us.

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Vadoscz was a belter of a player, far too good for us.

 

Some good ones from the late 90s early 00s, James Okoli. Loved a long throw. Ange Ouefio, Yann Soloy, Daniel Sengewald (rumour has it that you can still get odds on him being FGS on the Ladbrokes coupon).

 

We also once had Oli Gotskallson on trial, Icelandic I believe goalie who we turned down who later went on to be one of Hibs hilarious revolving door of shite goalies.

 

Also mind we had Hypiia on trial before he went to Liverpool and Mcleish knocked back Solskjaer.

 

Also got to share in the Doerner love, one of the few players I remember hitting the Motorola sign on top of the Cooper. From about the penalty spot.

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Francois Dubourdeau was another one-hit wonder. He played a blinder keeping a clean sheet in a 1-0 over one of the Cheeks (the ****, I think) and got a run in the team on the basis that he wasn't quite as bad as Stevie Woods.

Did we really have a 35-man first team squad in 01/02? At least half a dozen players in there I don't remember ever getting a single game.

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Francois Dubourdeau was another one-hit wonder. He played a blinder keeping a clean sheet in a 1-0 over one of the Cheeks (the ****, I think) and got a run in the team on the basis that he wasn't quite as bad as Stevie Woods.
Did we really have a 35-man first team squad in 01/02? At least half a dozen players in there I don't remember ever getting a single game.

Dubourdeau had a few good games until he decided to elbow Dargo on the edge of the box down at Killie one night and got sent off and cost us the game....he's also the last goalie that beat rangers in the league.
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29 minutes ago, MP_MFC said:

Mcleish knocked back Solskjaer.

 

The story I heard was that McLeish actually wanted Solskjaer, and asked the board for circa £250k to buy him.  The board felt this was too expensive and refused. 

GIven McLeish's history with spending our money, it's no surprise they decided to ignore his recommendation!

Still a wee bit later he goes to Man Utd for £1.5m and scores the winner in the Champions League Final...

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18 minutes ago, Desp said:

The story I heard was that McLeish actually wanted Solskjaer, and asked the board for circa £250k to buy him.  The board felt this was too expensive and refused. 

GIven McLeish's history with spending our money, it's no surprise they decided to ignore his recommendation!

Still a wee bit later he goes to Man Utd for £1.5m and scores the winner in the Champions League Final...

Tbf he'd probably be relegating us as manager right now in that timeline.

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Vadocz is the only ex-Motherwell player to have scored in the Bernabeu.*

He was also magic and I remember hims saying he loved Motherwell and wanted to stay. At that point I vowed to never go to Hungary or Auxerre. 

 

VADOCZ! VADOCZ! VADOCZ IS ON FIRE!

 

(*Probably, i don't really know tbh)

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I always remember Vadocz being fairly decent,  in football manager 07 he was one of the only well players with a picture, but for some reason it was a picture of Jamie Murphy as opposed to him. 

what about Marios Klimpl? was he more of a cult hero than being any good?

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We were offered Solskjaer, Tore Andre Flo and Frode Grodas all at the same time, and we said no thanks to all 3.

We also very very nearly signed Bruce Grobelaar.

I love "what might have been" stories. My favourite being two teenagers called Robert Pires and Thierry Henry spending time on trial at Aberdeen and heading home afterwards with a "thanks but no thanks".

Special mention to the passport mix-up that took a few hours too long to sort, and prevented Ronaldinho rocking up to Love Street.

Edited by Al B
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Just now, Neil86 said:

what about Marios Klimpl? was he more of a cult hero than being any good?

Yes and no.

Yes; he wasn't Bob Malcolm and he was a good laugh, no; he was unable to not kick people into the sky when we were desperately trying to get into Europe via the fair play award.

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4 hours ago, Desp said:

The story I heard was that McLeish actually wanted Solskjaer, and asked the board for circa £250k to buy him.  The board felt this was too expensive and refused. 

GIven McLeish's history with spending our money, it's no surprise they decided to ignore his recommendation!

Still a wee bit later he goes to Man Utd for £1.5m and scores the winner in the Champions League Final...

McLeish spent some of our money wisely

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