10 Championship Manager Cult Heroes

9. Maxim Tsigalko

Championship Manager Freddy Adu
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Keeping the Eastern European theme going, this maestro from Belarus was available for less than £2 million in CM 01/02 and was pretty much guaranteed to score you goals, goals and goals. Some had to resort to having him man-mark the goalkeeper, a disgraceful tactic that I certainly never resorted to myself, but even without such heinous acts you could pretty much guarantee a gazillion goals from Maxim.

Which was strange, because not even his name was spelt correctly. 

In the miserable cold of the real world, Maxim Tasigalko was actually Maksim Tsyhalka, which isn't too different when Russian phonetics are taken into account. He also retired aged 26, due to his bones being made out of already cracked glass. 

Still, Maxim did make it to the international arena with Belarus, making two starts and scoring one goal, which I can only assume came after some ravenous man-marking of the goalkeeper. 

I mean, who actually does that? 

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.