7 players who definitely weren’t legends but played in legends games

We love legends matches. Specifically, we love watching footballers who are unarguably not legends appear in legends matches.

There are fewer sweeter sights in football than an old icon rolling back the years in front of adoring fans while the transfer flop adored by nobody pretends all the glory is for him.

We’ve taken a look at six excellent examples of players which have supporters have tried to forget appearing alongside heroes of their respective clubs.

It’s fairly uncontroversial to suggest Manchester United against Liverpool is the biggest fixture in English football. So when the two clubs faced off in a game billed as the ‘Legends of the North match’ in May 2022, there were some grandiose names on the team sheets.

Jamie Carragher, Gary Neville, Jaap Stam, Jerzy Dudek and, err, Anthony Le Tallec.

The Frenchman played just 17 league games for Liverpool after signing as a youngster in 2001. He also went out on five loans during his spell as a Red, most notably to Sunderland, where he was part of a side that achieved a then-record low Premier League points total and were relegated dead last.

To be fair to Le Tallec, he wasn’t the only non-legend playing in the game. Bjorn Tore Kvarme and Andriy Voronin were also on the park. To be unfair to Anthony Le Tallec, we still chose to lead with him.

Vincent Kompany’s testimonial provided a curious Manchester City Legends side, comprising of obvious greats from the club’s most successful period and cult heroes from the years prior to them becoming a superclub.

Wright, however, falls into neither category. The goalkeeper was technically there between 2012 and 2016 – never forget he joined shortly only months after leaving Preston due to homesickness FFS – but he never actually