Thousands flocked to Kensington Oval on Friday night for the British Airways Football Legends Invitational Tournament.
The tournament, being held for a charitable cause, is the brainchild of the Barbados Tourism Authority and the Professional Football Association, featuring former players of the highly touted English Premier League.
Football fanatics converged at the Oval from as early as 5 pm, to see some of the greatest players of the game. Names such as Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke, Gianfranco Zola, Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham were just some of the players scheduled to grace the “Mecca”.
Kensington Oval was divided into two with matches being played simultaneously – the matches were six-a-side, ten minutes each half.
The electronic display screen was also evenly divided so the large crowd could keep their eyes on one match while glimpsing the other from the screen.
The ball got rolling with Blackburn Rovers up against the Player Football Association (PFA) team. Blackburn held in their ranks, the likes of Manchester United Academy goalkeeping coach Alan Fettis, Leeds manager Simon Grayson, the dynamic left wing back Michael Gray, and forward Matt Jansen, player/coach for Northern Ireland Premiership outfit Chorley.
The PFA team featured a number of world class players from various clubs including former Scotland International defender John Collins, Dutch wingman Bryan Roy, and Steve Lomas, who once featured for Manchester City and West Ham United, where he is now the manager for the reserve team.
The match ended in an entertaining 5-5 draw.
Arsenal and Chelsea played on Pitch B just minutes later. This match was undoubtedly the crowd puller with some very popular faces on the field, particularly Chelsea’s ex-Dutch national front man Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink, France World Cup winner Frank Leboeuf, Uruguayan legend Gustavo Poyet, Italian midfielder Roberto Di Matteo and countryman Gianfranco Zola.
Arsenal, not as popular as their London rivals, still included some well known names, such as Oldham Athletic manager Paul Dickov, Sweden’s 1994 World Cup player Anders Limpar and the versatile Stefan Schwarz.
The match finished 7-3 to the “Blues”, the first of three wins, which saw them gain a perfect record. Scalps also included Manchester United (5-4) and Newcastle (4-2). Zola was the obvious crowd favourite, rolling back the years, to remind fans why he was known as the “little magician”. He along with Poyet scored the majority of Chelsea’s 16 goals.
Manchester United is always a popular unit, any part of the globe and Barbadians displayed their obvious affection with a sea of red in the stands.
Manchester featured members of their famous 1999 treble, the dynamic duo Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke and South African midfielder Quinton Fortune. In their first match they blew away Newcastle United 5-2 and followed with a 10-3 win over Arsenal before losing a compelling duel with Chelsea 4-5.
A team which attracted a substantial amount of interest was the glory team of the 1970s and 1980s, the joy of Merseyside, Liverpool. Fans’ interest was piqued by the presence of guest player, former West Indies cricket captain Brian Lara who scored with his first touch and created another minutes later, in a 5-4 win over Tottenham Hotspurs.
Liverpool did not enjoy such a good spell on the night as they suffered consecutive defeats to Blackburn (2-4) and PFA (4-5) respectively.
Tottenham made a contribution in each of the results columns, losing to Liverpool, drawing with Blackburn and winning their final match on the night against PFA 4-2.
Some local players got a chance to rub shoulders with the big boys featuring in some of the teams.
Former national goalkeeper Mark Armstrong came up with come outstanding saves for his adopted team Chelsea.
