The beautiful game has been blessed with its fair share of colourful characters throughout history.
Here, we take a look at some of the most eccentric footballers of all time, from brilliantly bonkers goalkeepers to strikers who just couldn't help but get up to all sorts of mischief (on and off the pitch).
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Ghana’s record goalscorer, Asamoah Gyan almost fired his country to the semi-finals of the 2010 World Cup (only for Luis Suarez to intervene).
Notable for wearing the number three shirt despite being a striker (that’s a left-back’s number, for goodness sake!), Gyan also raised eyebrows when, in his prime, he swapped Premier League Sunderland for Abu Dahbi-based side Al Ain. He was only 25 at the time, and he never played in a top league again.
One of the greatest Dutch footballers of all time, Edgar Davids starred for some of the biggest clubs in Europe – but he wound down his career as player-manager at Barnet, then of League Two.
And it was there that the dreadlocked midfield maestro – a supreme street footballer in his youth – made the quirky decision to wear the number one shirt, hoping to “set a trend” of midfielders doing so. How did that work out, Edgar…?
With his bleach-blond mohawk and an enormous rose tattoo covering the front of his neck, Radja Nainggolan certainly stood out.
The former Roma and Belgium midfielder could be a confrontational character on the pitch, and he courted controversy off it by smoking – at Euro 2016, he even had to have a hotel room with a balcony so he could light up.
A 1994/95 Champions League winner with Ajax who was capped 20 times by the Netherlands, Winston Bogarde had a pretty good career – but it’s the bizarre way in which it finished that earns him a spot on our list.
In 2000, the defender joined Chelsea – only for manager Gianluca Vialli to be sacked almost immediately. New boss Claudio Ranieri didn’t want Bogarde – but, rather than seeking regular football elsewhere, he opted to run down his contract, making just one appearance in his final three-and-a-half years at Stamford Bridge. Stubborn – and a bit mad.
We all love a goalscoring goalkeeper, don’t we? Well, Rogerio Ceni found the net 129 times over the course of his career – which he spent almost entirely with Brazilian giants Sao Paulo.
Free-kick? Penalty? No problem; Ceni would take it. The 17-time Brazil international – who played on into his 40s – even registered from open play once!
Instantly recognisable for his bold hairstyles and striking fashion sense, Djibril Cisse was one of the most promising French players of the early 20th century.
Injuries – including two horrific leg breaks – stopped him from realising his true potential, but the heavily tattooed striker still won the Champions League and FA Cup with Liverpool, before making a cameo in French action-comedy film Taxi 4 – and later launching his own fragrance, Mr Lenoir.
Among Chile’s best ever players, Ivan Zamorano enjoyed success in Europe with Real Madrid and Inter Milan – and it was during his time at the latter that he truly showed his eccentric side.
When Inter signed Roberto Baggio, he took the number 10 shirt from Ronaldo – who in turn took the number nine from Zamorano. That didn’t go down too well with Ivan el Terrible, so he ended up donning a unique jersey with ‘1+8’ on the back. It ended up being the most-sold shirt in the history of Italian football.
Once described by Jose Mourinho, his manager at Inter, as “a fantastic person” with “the attitude of a child”, Mark Arnautovic has earned a bad-boy reputation.
The Austria striker’s rap sheet includes a first-half rec card for an elbow on Southampton’s Jack Stephens during his time at West Ham, and a suspension for “insulting” North Macedonia’s Ezgjan Alioski and Egzon Bejtulai while celebrating a goal at Euro 2020 - allegedly due to their Macedonian-Albanian heritage (Arnautovic’s father is from Serbia, who haven’t tended to get along with Albania).
Another goalscoring South American goalkeeping great, Jose Luis Chilavert was up there with the world’s top custodians during the 90s.
But his eccentricity went beyond his goals – many of which came from free-kicks. The long-time Paraguay captain had a fiery streak and didn’t shy away from a scrap, notably seeing red for a fight with Colombia’s Tino Asprilla in a 1998 World Cup qualifier. He gained his nickname, El Buldog (we probably don’t need to translate that one) for good reason – and he even had the animal stitched onto his jerseys.
You’ve got to be a bit mad to move directly from Everton to Liverpool (only a handful of players have turned out for both Merseyside rivals) – and Portuguese defender Abel Xavier certainly was.
Fond of blond – dying his distinctive hair and magnificent beard that colour – Xavier was banned for six months after, er, passionately protesting a penalty awarded to France in the semi-finals of Euro 2000 – which Zinedine Zidane converted to send Portugal packing. Later on, at Middlesbrough, he became the first player in Premier League history to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
Jurgen Klinsmann went on to become quite a popular figure in England, but the iconic German frontman was greeted with scepticism upon his arrival at Tottenham in 1994.
Criticised for being a diver, Klinsmann – who, away from football, completed a bakery apprenticeship as a youngster – had just the response for his critics when he scored for Spurs: he made a mockery of their assertion by theatrically flinging himself to the ground. It remains one of the great Premier League goal celebrations.
Probably the most famous player never to play top-flight football in England, Adebayo Akinfenwa was an absolute giant of the lower-league game. Quite literally – he wasn’t nicknamed the Beast for nothing.
Built more like an American football player, the ultimate target man spent the best years of his career with Wycombe Wanderers, becoming their record EFL goalscorer and whipping out celebrations such as a re-enactment of the WWE move known as the People’s Elbow.
Off the pitch, the man perennially rated as the strongest player on FIFA launched his own clothing brand, Beast Mode, and since retiring, has continued to be heavily involved in the media.
Quite the character, Antonio Cassano was a hugely talented player with a seriously short fuse – so much so that Fabio Capello, his boss at Roma and Real Madrid, coined the term ‘cassanata’ to describe someone disruptive to team spirit.
Among the 39-cap Italy striker’s more notorious career flashpoints was a dressing-room brawl with Inter Milan coach Andrea Stramaccioni – which his teammates had to break up.
Certainly one of the most fervent players of the modern Premier League era, Richarlison’s eccentricity has manifested itself in art and on-field actions.
In 2023, the Brazilian forward unveiled an enormous tattoo on his back, featuring his own face flanked by those of Ronaldo and Neymar – while the year before, he got himself in trouble with the FA for tossing a lit flair back into the crowd while celebrating his winning goal for Everton against Chelsea.
Toni Schumacher’s borderline assault on France’s Patrick Battiston in the 1982 World Cup semi-final was one of the most sickening incidents ever seen on a football pitch – and we’re certainly not here to celebrate the former West Germany goalkeeper’s eccentricity.
But it has to be noted that following that coming together (that must have been how the referee saw it as he didn’t even produce a yellow card), Schumacher, when told that Battiston had lost two teeth, unsympathetically replied: “If that's all that's wrong, tell him I'll pay for the crowns.”
It’s fair to say he’s not a popular man in France, where he was once voted even more hated than Hitler. Ooh er.
Chief rabble-rouser in Wimbledon’s ‘Crazy Gang’ team, Vinnie Jones has to go down as one of the hardest players in the history of the game.
He exemplified that with many a crunching tackle – but he also had a considerably sneakier side to his game, which included antics such as grabbing opponents in the unmentionables…
You might not have heard of Mwepu Ilunga, but there’s a good chance you’ve seen the one moment of pure madness which earnt him his spot so high up this list.
In Zaire’s 1974 World Cup clash against Brazil, the defender came charging out of the wall and lamped the ball away before the referee had blown the whistle for the free-kick to be taken. He later explained that he’d tried to get sent off in protest at his country withholding wages from players.
A sweeper-keeper before his time, legendary Mexico goalkeeper Jorge Campos seemed to spend as much time outside his penalty area as he did in it.
Synonymous with the garish kits he designed himself, the inimitable Campos developed a reputation for highly risking goalkeeping – when he wasn’t playing up front, as he often did at club level.
Surely the single most entertaining footballer of the 21st century, Ronaldinho delighted fans in his native Brazil and all around the world with his audacious approach to the game.
An immensely gifted player who loved to party – so much so that Flamengo even inserted a ‘nightclub’ clause into his contract, the 2005 Ballon d’Or winner will go down in history for a whole host of iconic goals – from his outrageous lob of David Seaman en route to 2002 World Cup glory, to his astonishing toe-poked goal for Barcelona against Chelsea in the 2004/05 Champions League.
The spitting image of The Simpsons villain Sideshow Bob with his unmistakable mop of curly hair, David Luiz won the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League with Chelsea – but the versatile Brazilian defender didn’t do so without showing more than a sliver of craziness.
Prone to inexplicable lapses in concentration – which he often had to make up for with reckless fouls, Luiz once declared his favourite place in the UK to be… Legoland.
A player with an inflated sense of how good he actually was, Nicklas Bendtner made plenty of headlines for things other than his footballing ability.
Here are just some of the ex-Arsenal striker’s newsworthy moments: crashing his Aston Martin after changing his shirt number for good luck (awkward); emerging from a nightclub with his jeans undone; and revealing Paddy Power-sponsored pants when celebrating a goal for Denmark at Euro 2012, earning himself a ban and fine.
France’s 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000-winning goalkeeper, Fabien Barthez seemed to show off his eccentric side most obviously during his time at Manchester United.
One of the craziest ‘keepers of the Premier League era, Barthez’s defining moment has to be the time he tried to psych out West Ham’s Paolo Di Canio in an FA Cup tie by putting his arm up to appeal for offside with the striker bearing down on goal. It failed hilariously.
The former Marseille and Monaco custodian hung up his gloves in 2007 to embark on a motor racing career – naturally.
Emmanuel Adebayor most notably exemplified his eccentricity with two classic Premier League moments.
The first: scoring for Manchester City against former club Arsenal, then sprinting the length of the pitch to celebrate provocatively right in front of the away fans (cue bottles raining down upon him). The second: refusing to give Tottenham teammate Christian Eriksen the man of the match award, bluntly insisting that he would “keep it for [himself]”.
There aren’t goalkeepers in the modern game like Emi Martinez, the undisputed king of the dark arts when it comes to penalty shootouts.
Martinez’s… let’s call them distraction tactics helped Argentina to victory on spot-kicks against France in the 2022 World Cup final – and he later aided Aston Villa in similar fashion, bravely (or crazily) riling Lille’s ultras during a shootout in the 2023/24 Conference League quarter-finals.
He deserved his World Cup Golden Glove award for his antics alone, to be honest.
One of the greatest strikers of all time and one of the greatest football characters of all time, there’s never been anyone quite like Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Whether scoring unnecessarily extravagant bicycle kicks or likening himself to a lion – “Lions, they don’t compare themselves with humans” – Zlatan has always been one of a kind.
Unquestionably the best footballer on this list, Diego Maradona’s eccentric side didn’t always make him friends in the game…
From the Hand of God (which, as if to emphasise his multifaceted character, came in the same game as his Goal of the Century – sorry, England fans) to his camera-scaring celebration at the 1994 World Cup, to his fondness for cocaine… the late Pibe de Oro was something else altogether.
A proper Premier League madman, Paolo Di Canio gained notoriety for his shove on referee Paul Alcock during his Sheffield Wednesday days (ok, Alcock made a right meal of it, but Di Canio still got an 11-match ban).
But the larger-than-life Italian also showed he eccentricity in more sporting fashion, no more famously than when he caught the ball while clean through on goal for West Ham against Everton, deciding not to take advantage of stricken Toffees goalkeeper Paul Gerrard.
English football’s greatest character, Paul Gascoigne was just about the most popular player in the game during the mid-90s (the term Gazzamania didn’t come from nowhere).
And his popularity owed much to the cheekiness which ran through his game – whether he was ‘booking’ referees after they dropped their yellow cards or performing the ‘dentist’s chair’ celebration after scoring one of the great England goals against Scotland at Euro 96, looking utterly iconic with his bleached hair.
An enigma and an icon, Eric Cantona remains one of the most transformative foreign imports in the history of the Premier League – and his time at Manchester United was eccentricity personified.
From setting a trend with his upturned shirt collar to that kung fu kick at Selhurst Park, the brilliant Frenchman was truly unparalleled.
What really summed up his singularity, though, was one quote from a press conference in 1995. You know the one: “When the seagulls follow the trawler…”
His various managers won’t have seen the funny side, but Mario Balotelli’s bad behaviour makes him one of the most eccentric footballers of all time.
Some highlights: lifting his shirt to reveal the words ‘Why always me?’ in a nod to his notoriety during Manchester City’s 6-1 demolition of Manchester United at Old Trafford in 2011; setting his house on fire by letting fireworks off inside it; and driving into a women’s prison in Italy to “have a look round”.
Oh, Mario…
Goalkeepers are supposed to be crazy, and Rene Higuita clearly got the memo. The Colombian cult hero will forever be remembered for his ridiculous scorpion kick against England at Wembley in 1995 – but that’s only half the story.
Nicknamed El Loco (The Crazy One) for his utterly unhinged, extraordinarily high-risk approach to goalkeeping, Higuita was imprisoned in 1993 for profiting from the release of the kidnapped daughter of Carlos Molina – a rival to notorious drug baron Pablo Escobar. “I’m a footballer,” he said. “I don’t know anything about kidnapping laws.”
And last but not least, we have the human blueprint for football eccentricity: Bruce Grobbelaar, spaghetti-legged goalkeeper of Liverpool’s 1983/84 European Cup-winning team.
Aside from helping the Reds to penalty shootout victory over Roma in the final with the routine that inspired Jerzy Dudek’s heroics against AC Milan in Istanbul 31 years later, the moustachioed Zimbabwean got up to mischief including but not limited to: entertaining the crowd by placing coins tossed onto the pitch over his eyes; and urinating on the Anfield goalposts to try and lift a curse; and, aptly, going as Batman villain the Joker to a Christmas do.
