After Liverpool striker Luis Suarez disgraced himself yet again and confirmed his status as a vampire, by biting centre back Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder, in Uruguay's 1-0 victory over Italy on Tuesday - the third fellow professional footballer he has bitten in his career, after PSV's Otman Bakkal and Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic - we started thinking... If Suarez is a vampire, which other classic horror monsters could have been hiding in full sight amongst football's ranks over the years? The world of football boasts a wide variety of characters whose looks, traits and performances resemble some of the classic antagonists in movie history - namely the Universal Monsters. The classic Universal Monsters date back to 1923 and the classic era went on (with the likes of Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Lon Chaney Jr and Bela Lugosi) until 1960, but there have been more additions to the monster roster since then. Likewise, football has a rich history and so there were bound to be more similarities with said monsters than just Luis Suarez's lust for human flesh. On that note, let's take a look at some examples that fall in to that criteria. Here are eleven footballers who might actually be Universal Monsters...
chroniclelive.co.ukIn November 2008, Arton Beleci - a neuro-linguistic programmer from Stockton-on-Tees in the North East of England - embarked on an intensive year-long training regime with the goal of turning himself from a very average amateur footballer into a Premier League player. Beleci described his mission as follows:
I've assembled a team of world-renowned experts and have been pulling this together for 18 months. I believe we can do it. We have the persistence to go through with it, even if I don't have the natural talent. I think we have all the right ingredients to take it as far as we can. It's just up to my execution.
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Beleci wanted to develop the footballing brain of Dimitar Berbatov, the set-piece taking ability of David Beckham, the movement of Thierry Henry, the turning ability of Robin van Persie, the finishing ability of Ruud van Nistelrooy, the strength of Didier Drogba, the explosiveness of Fernando Torres, the balance of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the dribbling skills of Lionel Messi, the heading prowess of Cristiano Ronaldo and the flamboyant tricks of Robinho - bringing them all together, like a Frankenstein's Monster style mish-mash of parts, to make him the complete player. Suffice to say... he failed. And now on to the actual list...