Newcastle: 10 Craziest Players Ever To Wear Black & White

4. Paul Cannell

You may not know the name Cannell, but there's a good chance he's the most famous former Newcastle United player you've never heard of (unless you're closer to 50 than 30.) He was the first player to be sponsored by Nike, had special disco shoes made for him by the company and dated an American president's daughter while playing in the MLS. Cannell was a local lad who needed to leave Newcastle to find fame and notoriety, though he did make a name for himself in five years as a striker in his native North East. But when he moved to the US, and the Washington Diplomats, his star shot up. Reading through Cannell's autobiography - wonderfully named "F*ckin' Hell, It's Paul Cannell" - is like witnessing the last days of Caligula at times, with heady tales of threesomes (and accidental male-male penetration in a memorable sequence,) drug deals and general debauchery, and it is written with a breath-takingly refreshing absence of the kind of vanilla editing that makes modern football biographies so uninspiring.