Who ate all the pies? Five legends with large waistlines

2. Jan Molby

Jan Molby did not have the best of the starts at Liverpool, and was widely questioned by fans and critics alike for his large waistline. But once he got past the slow start, he endeared himself to the Anfield faithful like few would have.

In his own words, “They used to say I was fat, Now they say I’m powerful.” He famously never left the centre circle during an entire match, and his 44 goals for the club did not involve much running, 40 of them were penalties.

He was a squad player with the “Dynamite” Danish international side which lit up the 1984 European Championship and 1986 World Cup. He was so much of a food lover that he wrote of his brief stint behind the bars, “The food was often uneatable, worse than you’d give to a dog. I suppose one good thing was that it helped me lose four stones in weight.”

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1. Ferenc Puskas

Ferenc Puskas, nicknamed the “Galloping Major” is one of the finest players to have ever graced the game. Short, stocky with a potbelly that misled most to believe he could never cope up with the demands of the sport, his list of honours could put most of his fitter counterparts to shame.

In a career that spanned 23 years, he won 3 European Cups, 10 National Championships and 8 top Individual top scorer awards. He was the chief magician of the so-called Magical Magyars, the Hungarian team that terrorised defenses all over the world and became the first foreign team to win at Wembley in 1953.

An unidentified English player is believed to have said before the match, “Look at that little fat chap. We’ll murder this lot.” Indeed, the match ended 6-3 to Hungary. He scored 84 goals in 85 international matches for Hungary, 357 goals in 354 games in the Hungarian Championship and a further 157 goals in 182 appearances for Real Madrid.

His career goal tally stands at 1176 goals in 1300 matches!

The list is not a comprehensive one, as we had to leave out some of the more famous ones like Neil Ruddock, who had his shorts specially made so that he could ‘fit in’, and the likes of John Barnes and Luis Ronaldo who looked more like they belong to the Wrestling ring than the football field towards the end of their careers.

One could also not forget the legend of Thomas Brolin, who in the words of Roy Collins,had “arrived looking like the fat, cardboard replica next to which Slimmers of the Year tend to pose, and played like it”, and went on to open a restaurant with all the dishes served being “his own ideas”.