1) William “Fatty” Foulke

“I don’t mind what they call me as long as they don’t call me late for my lunch,” said William Foulke on more than one occasion. The massive goalkeeper is on record as being the fattest person to play professional football and his size made him a target of regular abuse from fans. As the mischievous soundtrack tacked over the closing stages of this archive video footage hints, Foulke may well have been the inspiration for a particularly famous terrace anthem pertaining to the consumption of pies that remains popular in football grounds the length and breadth of the UK to this day.

Born in Dawley, Shropshire in April 1874, Foulke left his local colliery’s works team as a 19-year-old to join Sheffield United, to whom he was sold for £20. “In Foulke, Sheffield United have a goalkeeper who will take a lot of beating,” reported Scottish Sport, of a man whose greatest strength was his ability to stand stoutly in the face of players attempting to – legally in those days – bundle him over the line when he was in possession of the ball. “He is one of those lengthy individuals who can take a seat on the crossbar whenever he chooses, and shows little of the awkwardness usually characteristic of big men.”

Foulke wasn’t just big, he was massive. Fond of his food and a prodigious drinker, he was 6ft 2in, collapsed the scales at 22st in his pomp and was 25st when he retired, having accumulated a solitary England cap which he won against Wales in March 1897. All evidence suggests he should have won more, but Foulke was unpopular with the stuffed shirts of the Football Association, who were unimpressed by what they perceived to be his lack of fair play.

“It is a pity that Foulke cannot curb the habit of pulling down the crossbar, which on Saturday ended in his breaking it in two,” wrote a correspondent in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, revealing Foulke’s trademark ruse to reduce the size of the target. “On form, he is well in the running for international honours, but the selection committee are sure to prefer a man who plays the game to one who unnecessarily violates the spirit of the rules.”

Whether or not Foulke’s propensity for gamesmanship extended to the more genteel sport of cricket remains unclear, but he was a decent batsman and played first-class cricket with Derbyshire in the County Championship on a handful of occasions before packing it in to concentrate on his football.

Although it would be a long time before they were owned by Roman Abramovich or managed by José Mourinho, Foulke’s price-tag and lack of sportsmanship did not stop Chelsea rushing to sign him for the eye-watering transfer fee of £50 shortly after they joined the Football League in 1905. Unlike Sheffield United, for whom he had played 350 times but left in a dispute over wages, they agreed to pay him the maximum. Heavier than ever, he dwarfed his team-mates and the club hit on the amusing wheeze of positioning a small boy behind each of Foulke’s goalposts in order to make their goalkeeper look even more imposing in the face of strikers.

Still boasting the speed and agility which had prompted one observer to liken him to “a leviathan at 22st with the agility of a bantam”, Foulke conserved energy by tasking these children with retrieving the ball any time it was fired wide of his goal. Noting how much time this saved during games, other clubs soon followed suit by introducing “ball boys” of their own.

Still piling on the pounds and finding it increasingly difficult to save low shots, Foulke played 35 times for Chelsea before signing for Bradford City and retiring from first-class football to focus solely on the shop, pub and illegal gambling business he ran with his wife in November 1907. The big man died on 1 May 1916 from cirrhosis, aged 42.

2) Kevin “Mighty” Mouse

At just a smidgen over 5ft in his socks, with a pudding bowl haircut and myopia so bad he was forced to wear his thick Coke-bottle specs even while playing football, trainee doctor Kevin Mouse looked every inch the schoolyard last pick, even before his chronic obesity was factored in. But for all his many physical shortcomings, not least the visibly jiggling man-boobs contained within his tight jersey and the bloated muffin top visibly hanging over the waistband of his XXXL shorts, such was the young midfielder’s skill he managed to forge a very successful career as a top-flight professional in England and Scotland while simultaneously complying with the unforgiving demands made of those studying full-time for medical degrees.

A grotesque athletic specimen with fairy dust sprinkled in his boots and the ability to hit powerful shots that could swerve at ridiculous angles, Mouse was fortunate a 14-year career which began in 1979 and spanned three decades until his retirement in 1993 largely coincided with a time when bleep tests and body fat indexes were considered by most football men to be new-fangled rubbish, if indeed they considered them at all.

The fact he was a fictional comic strip character may also have helped Mighty Mouse prolong his career, although a move to the more pedestrian environs of the Scottish Second Division almost certainly increased the longevity of a man whose weight issues suggested he had no business being anywhere near a football field, even if he did feel more at home in a city famous for its deep-fried Mars bars.

Having made his top-flight professional debut playing for Tottenford Rovers in the Roy of the Rovers comic in 1979 (despite playing part-time for his hospital team St Victor’s at the same time, he found it nigh on impossible to shed his comically excess blubber), Mighty Mouse played in the Uefa Cup before moving to Glasgow to join “Hot Shot” Hamish Balfour at Princes Park, where the unlikely little and large combo, along with Balfour’s pet goat McMutton, became inseparable. Their almost supernatural on-field telepathy under the stewardship of the eccentric manager Ian McWhacker helped Princes Park win the now defunct Cup Winners’ Cup in 1986. The three men subsequently left for Rangers, with whom they lifted the Scottish League Cup in 1991.

3) Jan Molby

Jan Molby in action for Liverpool at Newcastle in 1985. Photograph: David Cannon/Getty Images

A centre-circle dweller with the turning circle of the HMS Belfast, Jan Molby was affectionately labelled “the only player I have ever met who is capable of putting on weight during a football match” by his former Liverpool manager Graeme Souness. The Dane was signed from Ajax, where as a 20-year-old he had spent a season lining up with Frank Rijkaard, Marco van Basten and Johan Cruyff.

He joined Liverpool in August 1984 and scored 44 goals in 218 appearances before his career at Anfield petered out in 1996. After a slow start comprised largely of substitute appearances which left him unsettled, Molby established himself as a staple in the heart of their midfield during his second and third seasons. His close control, exquisite touch and vision and ability to pick out a defence-splitting pass to zippier team-mates quickly made him a firm favourite.

Kopites were prepared to overlook his obvious rotundity and the involuntary fetish for figure-hugging skin-tight football shirts almost 30 years before they became fashionable. His name (pronounced Malboo, incidentally) quickly became a byword for lack of mobility, while his thunderbolt of a long-range shot, a brief spell in the Big House following a comedy car chase we’re probably still obliged to tut disapprovingly over and his status as the world’s most Scouse-sounding Dane further endeared him to fans of football “characters” everywhere. His man-of-the-match performance alongside Kevin MacDonald against Everton in the 1986 FA Cup final was probably his outstanding career highlight. Up against Peter Reid and Paul Bracewell in centre midfield, Molby had the game of his life, creating two and proving instrumental in the third of Liverpool’s three goals as they came from behind to beat their bitter city rivals at Wembley.

On the field, Molby’s excessive girth simply wasn’t a problem because he had both the ball and assorted team-mates do his running for him. “[Xabi] Alonso and myself are similar in that we both try to make the ball do the work,” he told one interviewer. “He’s a clever footballer, a real playmaker who is really intelligent and likes to sit in there. It’s almost as if he’s got a remote control, dictating the game.” An earlier and less svelte model, the Dane’s style was identical.

Off the pitch, it was a different story. The sedentary lifestyle forced on him by occasional injuries meant the pounds piled on, resulting in longer periods of recuperation as he attempted to shed them. Following an injury picked up in pre-season in 1987, Molby found himself down the pecking order and unable to establish himself in the first team despite widespread belief that any other top-flight club would be delighted to have him. He remained at Anfield for another seven years, but was a large and largely peripheral figure apart from the 1990-91 and 91-92 seasons.

For all the jokes Molby good-naturedly endures about his weight, he believes it helped him to be accepted on Merseyside, where he has made his home. “All the players today are like racehorses and so I think people on the street might look at me and think if he can do it we can all do it, so I think that makes them warm to me too,” he said.

It also helps that he was in fact no slouch. No real lard-arse could have pulled off that famous “lost” goal he scored against Manchester United in a League Cup match at Anfield in 1985. Unfortunately for Molby, a television strike ensured the match went unrecorded which meant incredulous reports from those lucky enough to witness it at Anfield remained unconfirmed and presumed exaggerated … until this police recording of the match was unearthed years later.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mick Quinn, circa 1990 with Newcastle. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas/Getty Images

“He’s fat, he’s round, he’s worth a million pounds!” So went the chant when laugh-a-minute Scouser Mick Quinn first became a noticeably large blip on the football radar as a Portsmouth player in the mid-1980s. He scored 54 goals in 121 appearances before transferring to Newcastle for a sum £320,000 shy of the aforementioned amount. Quinn became a firm terrace favourite during his three-year spell and then moved on to Coventry City.

At Highfield Road he earned the sobriquet “Sumo”, helping to keep the club in the top flight after embarking on an astonishing goalscoring spree with goals in his first six appearances. It is a record he is exceptionally proud of and one that still stands 22 years on, although Chelsea’s Diego Costa’s threatened to take it from Quinn, who is now a racehorse trainer and presenter with TalkSport.

“I want to keep my record for as long as possible,” said Quinn. “It’s something I’m very proud of. There aren’t many English strikers who are top scorers in the Premier League these days so I hope we can keep at least one record for a bit longer.”

Although well able to poke fun at his own expense, regularly describing himself as “lethal over one yard”, Quinn has always been quick to deny that, despite his size, he was ever anything but a good professional. “That’s a bit of a media myth, that,” he says. “You don’t play 550 league games and not be fit. Ask any of the managers I played under. I trained as hard as anyone.” These days the man some still call Sumo hangs his mawashi in Newmarket, where he continues to train hard, having notched up six winners from 21 entries at various racecourses around the UK this year.

5) Matthew Le Tissier

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Matt Le Tissier wipes his brow during a game for Southampton at Middlesbrough. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images

Renowned for what was regularly viewed as a heroically contrary refusal to leave Southampton for a bigger club during his playing career, it ought to come as no surprise that Matt Le Tissier waited until long after his retirement to begin fitness training with anything resembling enthusiasm. Having done his utmost to avoid breaking into anything more energy-sapping than a slow trot as a player, the Channel Islander was in his mid-40s when he got into the shape of his life. Viewers of Soccer Saturday on Sky Sports, on which he serves as a resident pundit, were able to gauge his progress as he shed almost three stone in the build-up to a charity run in his native Guernsey. “Strangely enough it’s been quite enjoyable, it’s been nice losing some weight,” he said in an interview that will have had his many former Southampton managers raising a quizzical collective eyebrow.

During a 16-year career during which he scored 161 goals in 443 appearances, Le Tissier won no medals and appeared in no finals. Laid bare in black and white, his statistics do scant justice to the achievements of an enigmatic genius who was unquestionably one of the finest footballers of his generation. While he was never a chubster in the Foulkes mode, a disinclination to train too hard coupled by daily refuelling stops at McDonald’s en route to training meant that Le Tissier often cut a far from svelte figure on the football field.

“Basically, I didn’t enjoy fitness,” he once told FourFourTwo magazine. “I’d train all day if there was a ball involved, but on pre-season you just ran for two weeks, and that bored the shit out of me. I knew I should have worked on my fitness more, but I also knew I had the ability to change games without being as fit as the other players on the pitch.”

And how. Looking for all the world like some random bloke who’d been hauled out of the local pub to play in midfield for a struggling top-flight football team, it was with the ball at his feet 30 odd yards from goal when Le Tissier’s languid style was at its most mesmeric.

Opposing defenders and spectators were regularly stunned by the bewitching repertoire of often extraordinary shooting and passing skills he employed to almost singlehandedly keep Southampton just above the league table’s thick black line season after season. Regularly branded an unaffordable luxury by managers too lacking in courage or imagination to build their England teams around him, Le Tissier earned an army of admirers, but just a paltry eight England caps in a career that ended with nothing to show for it … except one of football’s most exhilarating personal show-reels.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Adebayo Akinfenwa in 2013. Photograph: Sam Holden/SamHoldenAgency

OK, he’s neither fat nor unfit, but the sight of the imposing Adebayo Akinfenwa poured into his AFC Wimbledon shirt certainly doesn’t conform to the stereotypical image of a professional footballer and that’s good enough for us. Built like a brick privy that can bench-press two similarly sized brick privys and weighing in at 16st despite being an inch shy of 6ft, Akinfenwa became something of a cult hero upon being labelled the strongest player in the world by the makers of the unfeasibly popular computer game Fifa 14. “If they say so, I must be,” he told an interviewer last summer. “I like that. I’ve played as myself a few times and I’m very slow. I’ve asked Fifa to make me a little bit quicker, but you can’t have everything. I’ve always been big, my brothers are my size, we come from good stock.”

Having scored and created goals everywhere he’s been throughout a journeyman career that’s taken him around the lower leagues, the likeable Akinfenwa has attempted to maximise the commercial possibilities of his title as world’s strongest player through various TV appearances and by launching his own Beast Mode range of clothing and accessories. Small wonder, then, that he is fiercely protective of his status and was disgruntled at the prospect of losing it. Upon hearing scarcely believable speculation that he might be usurped as the world’s strongest player on Fifa 15 by some unnamed South American, he promptly challenged his rival to a weightlifting competition.

“I like the tag of being the strongest player in football so I put a little message in to see if I was still going to be the strongest when the new game comes out,” said Akinfenwa recently, shortly after an on-field meeting with the equally immovable force that is Luton Town’s Steve McNulty. “They told me the chances of me still being the strongest are very good. But if I am not the strongest, I will call out whoever is the strongest out for a bench-press challenge!”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Akinfenwa with Steve McNulty lurking in the background earlier this season. Photograph: Paul Redding/Action Images

A world’s strongest footballer competition? That’ll need a presenter. AC Jimbo’s “people” are probably already on the case.