Then he would take me off early so I would whine. That’s my game! Play me! That’s what I do! But he didn’t give me the chance. The centre-forward can’t leave the limits of the area, runs near post. “I wish I’d said: ‘Johan, I’d love to play for you, you’re a genius, but if you don’t want me let’s work out a move.’ I understood and accepted that – my ego’s not that big – but he didn’t have the courage to tell me.

“You could only have two foreigners and he wanted his own.

“He played me on the wing so I got pissed off and asked to move. “Cruyff didn’t want me,” Lineker told The Guardian in 2021. A move back to English football, with Tottenham Hotspur, was agreed in 1989. He scored twice on his debut against Racing Santander and ended up notching 21 goals in his debut season – including a hat-trick in the Bernabeu against Real Madrid.īut new manager Johan Cruyff eventually marginalised Lineker from the first team, often playing him on the right wing. Lineker’s international profile was raised after winning the Golden Boot at Mexico 86 and Barcelona snapped up the striker for a cool £2.8million fee immediately after the tournament. And it wasn’t that we took our eye off the ball.” Gary Lineker “You can’t imagine the burning sensation in your stomach when you lose a European Cup final. “Seville was my big regret it should have been historic, the first, but it became a trauma and everything was torn up. “It took five hours to get from the airport to town. “The league was enormous,” Archibald said in an interview with The Guardian in 2021. He was loaned out to Blackburn before signing for Hibernian on a permanent deal in 1988. The striker, who played 27 times for Scotland during the 1980s, helped Barca win La Liga in his first season in Spain and was part of the squad that reached the 1986 European Cup final.īut, after Barca lost that match to Steaua Bucharest, restrictions on fielding foreign players meant he was excluded from the squad after manager Terry Venables signed two replacement forwards. Steve ArchibaldĪrchibald became the first British player to play for Barcelona after they paid Tottenham £1.15million for his services in 1984. We’ve profiled the trio of British players who’ve represented Barcelona during their history and how they fared. In the very early years of the famous club, several Scottish players, most of whom worked in the Sant Andreu textile mill, pulled on the Blaugrana shirt.īut, since the advent of professionalism, only three men from the British Isles have played for Barca. They’ve signed plenty of big-name players from the Premier League, but very few of them have been Brits. In fact, it’s only three in the modern era.īarcelona have long had their pick of the world’s best talent, with players from around the globe representing them. Very few British players have represented Barcelona.

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