No wonder elite clubs will make Zinchenko top target

IT IS a quirk of football history that even its most brilliant, most celebrated and most iconic teams are littered with players that meet none of those criteria; men who, while fine professionals that ended their careers with shelves full of trophies and medals, were undoubtedly remarkable beneficiaries of time, place and circumstance.

- Malik Ouzia

Stephane Guivarc’h remains the modern reference point for the genre, famously leading the line at the 1998 World Cup for a legendary France team that, by Euro 2000, was choosing between Thierry Henry, Nicolas Anelka and David Trezeguet at centre-forward, but there have been plenty of others tarred with the same brush since.

Some may seem deserving of it and others less so, depending largely on how highly you rated Joan Capdevila or Oleguer, how jammy you considered Jesper Blomqvist or Massimo Oddo, and whether you can recall if Kleberson was actually half-decent until he signed for Manchester United.

Until six months ago, many would have put Oleksandr Zinchenko in the same camp. At Manchester City, in the most expensive football squad ever assembled, made up almost exclusively of marquee signings with a couple of reserves goalkeepers and academy graduates (one of whom is Phil Foden) thrown in, Zinchenko does not fit the mould.