What a decade... just typing ‘Leicester won the league’ makes you shake your head in disbelief
IT was a decade when old enemies Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger left the scene and a new rivalry between Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp took centre-stage.
When England won World Cups again, and Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi took goalscoring records to new heights. Although by the end of the 2010s we’d stopped celebrating goals as VAR ruled most of them out.
Here’s the best of the rest of the past 10 years:
FUNNIEST MOMENT:
Joey Barton’s ’Allo ’Allo performance at a Marseille press conference, Yaya Toure throwing a mega-strop because City didn’t give him a birthday cake and an Aston Villa fan throwing a cabbage at Steve Bruce were all funny. But the purple sex toy, waved into the ear of a Sky Sports reporter outside Everton’s training ground on transfer deadline day in 2014, was so inspired it changed the way this over-hyped day was reported.
BEST QUOTE:
Neil Warnock spoke for a nation by admitting that when he dies, he wants fans at all grounds to chant “‘Warnock’s a w **** r’ for a whole minute.” But for worldclass hubris it has to be Big Sam (below) at his first England press conference at St George’s Park, asking: “Do you think there might be a Sam Allardyce Suite here one day? I hope so. You never know, do you? I suppose it depends on how well I do over the next two years.” Ouch.
BEST SIGHT:
Players giving something back by setting up foundations and signing up for Common Goal made us proud. As did united action from fans’ groups forcing a £30 cap on away tickets. But the best sight of all was watching abused black players (and their team-mates) say “enough is enough” and threaten to walk off the pitch, something we should have seen decades ago. WORST SIGHT:
Gordon Taylor’s pay cheque, Alan Pardew’s victory dance at Wembley before his Crystal Palace side were beaten and England fans in Dortmund singing about German bombers on the day of a London terrorist attack all offended. But nothing made us wince like John Terry dressed in full kit (including boots, shin pads and sock tape, left) lifting the 2012 Champions League when he’d been banned from playing in the final.
BEST PLAYER:
Eden Hazard got fans off their seats like no other, Leicester and Chelsea would probably not have won titles without N’Golo Kante’s superhuman efforts and David Silva was exceptional. But I’m giving it to Sergio Aguero whose scoring rate for City (244 goals in 8.5 seasons) was almost as staggering as the fact that the four-times titlewinner didn’t make a PFA Team of the Season until 2018. BEST BANNER:
Crystal Palace fans bluntly told the Premier League: “£5billion in the trough yet supporters still exploited. Share the wealth pigs”. Wales fans upset the most entitled club ever with this beaut about Gareth Bale: “WALES. GOLF. MADRID... IN
But nothing beat Newcastle’s anti-Alan Pardew banner at Swansea: “LLWDLLLWWLWLLLLLLLLW LLDDLD - Not a Welsh town. Our form in 2014”.
BEST ACHIEVEMENT:
Sean Dyche and Eddie Howe made Burnley and Bournemouth established Premier League sides, Jurgen Klopp took Liverpool to three European finals and Mauricio Pochettino turned Spurs from a perennial joke into a force. But Leicester City winning the Premier League title was such an achievement just typing it makes you shake your head in disbelief.