TT BLOG

Paul Dennis – @paulden2310

Paul Looks back at some of the best foreign players to play for the Gulls

We may not be a Premier League club with their squads full of overseas players, but over the years we have had our own fair share of players from outside of our borders. So what follows is a team playing 4-3-3, made up of what I consider to be the best of our non British players with a Premier League size subs bench of the close contenders.   

THE MATCH DAY SQUAD

First of all  Bobby Olejnik get the goalkeepers position after making such a contribution in keeping a club record number of twenty clean sheets in a season. Interesting to note all of our USA, Polish and German players have all been goalkeepers. The back four was cobbled together a bit but I think I got there with a solid enough defence! The midfield is all Irish, with a mixture of grit guile and greatness and the forward line up has Caribbean flair, pace and skill with Rodney Jack and Gregory Goodridge with the strength and hold up play of Chima Okorie! 

So the team is:

Subs:

GK: Arjan van Heusden – Netherlands
GK: Lucas Covolan Cavagnari – Brazil
CB: Jakub Sokolik – Czech Republic
CM: Khalid Chalqi – Morocco
CM: Bruno Mereilles – Portugal
ST: Jean Pierre-Simb – France (Comedy Value!)
ST: Ruari Keating – Ireland
ST: Paul Hall – Jamaica
ST – Morike Sako – France
ST: Tony Bedeau – Grenada

THE HONOURABLE MENTIONS

While going through our list of players courtesy of that great site Torquay Fan Stats it brought up all of the other nationalities who have played for us so I dug a bit deeper to see what part of the world they all came from. It’s quite staggering to see the amount of countries represented and every continent if you include Ronald Huth from Paraguay who made such an impression for us in a pre season friendly win over West Bromwich Albion!

Below are some of those honourable (and some not so Honourable) Mentions!

Netherlands – Manny Duku
Ireland – Sinclair Armstrong, Sean Donellan, Dermot Curtis, Kevin Dawson
France – Aaron Nemane, Vincent Dorel, Habib Sissoko, Mamadou Sow, Guy Gnabouyou, Damien Mozika, Carl Priso
USA – Juergen Sommer, Brendan Moore
Poland – Marcin Brzozowksi, Filip Chalupniczak
German – Fabien Speiss
Sweden – Benjamin Kimpioka
Denmark – Riffi Haddaoui
Pakistan – Samir Nabi
Spain – Jose Luis Matteu Pinto
South Africa – Anton Greyling
Kenya – Taiwo Atieno
Australia – Giancarlo Gualifuoco
Sri Lanka – Dillon De Silva
Iceland – Oli Gattskallksson, Ivar Ingimarsson, Axel Andresson

Players on trial: 
Iran – Amir Hashemi 
Paraguay – Ronald Huth

Hakan Hayrettin played on loan from Barnet and was born of Turkish Cypriot parents in London so his Wikipedia page lists him as English and Olaf Koszela is of a similar situation with his Polish heritage.

COYY – Paul

OTHER ARTICLES

TT PARTNERS

TWITTER – INSTAGRAM – ETSY – YOUTUBE – FACEBOOK