Explained: What is a Premier League Barclaysman?
“What’s a Barclaysman?” you may ask, if you are one of the few who do not spend most of their waking hours on the Internet, for the footballing side of social media has been awash of late with a wave of nostalgia stronger than that of most other days.
A very peculiar concoction of the ongoing international break, the subsequent yearning for club football, and the inevitable “things were better in our day” reminiscing of Premier League football by those who grew up mostly in the noughties has brought forth the discussion of “Barclaysmen”, footballers who embodied the aura of football in the Premier League back when it had the British universal bank Barclays as its title sponsor.
Honestly, there are few sponsorship deals penned in the history of football that are as iconic Barclays’ title-sponsorship of the English topflight, for any good weekend of the league is often typecast as “peak Barclays” despite the bank having relinquished the role eight years ago.
Amid the monotony of Pep Guardiola’s serial-winning Man City, people are looking back to a time when things were more quirky, random, unexpected, and flavourful. Yes, Man United won the league every other year, but such facts can easily be overlooked or swatted away by a strong nostalgic mist that abstracts all that is grounded and embellishes the good moments. And, in fact, that United team were not as invincible as the present-day City.
The Barclaysmen are deemed exciting and attractive in their own unique ways, and which other team can claim those adjectives for themselves better than Tottenham? Ever known for those two things first and foremost, Spurs often carried out the duties of entertaining the masses better than some of their more-silverware-winning counterparts of the day.
So who is the most iconic Barclaysman of one the most Barclays sides of all time?
Full sleeves, black gloves, and flair beyond compare. “It was over before it started”, “the streets won’t forget”, and so on and so forth.
No one did it like Dimitar Berbatov. He may not have been the forward with the most goals or the most medals, but when on song you would hardly want to watch anyone else play.
Arriving at White Hart Lane in the summer of 2006 from the famous “Neverkusen” side for €15.7 million, the big Bulgarian would play for the Lilywhites for just two years, and yet in that time he managed to register over a 100 appearances, deliver exactly 75 goals and assists overall, and a trophy. Talk about peak Barclays.
It took a special player back in the day for the big, bad Man United to splash the big bucks, and Berbatov managed just that despite being almost 28 years of age in the summer of 2008 as he moved to Old Trafford for more trophies and more moments that would be etched into the Premier League folklore.
It’s been six years since Berbatov retired, and the streets have indeed not forgotten one of the greatest Barclaysmen.
What do you make of our pick? Who would you pick as Tottenham’s Barclaysman instead? Let us know in the comments.
