By John Smith

The category for this article is forgotten footballers, and if Colin Kazim-Richards isn’t quite that, well then certainly I hadn’t given him much thought recently. That was until last week when he popped up in a clip playing for Veracruz in Mexico scoring a fine goal, then getting sent off for a ludicrous handball as he attempted to punch one in.

https://youtu.be/5XzCLrOLs9s

Kazim-Richards might have his regrets about leading with his fists as that cross flashed in front of the Toluca goal, but I’m glad it brought him to mind, because shamefully he’d slipped off my radar.

I think I thought he was in Brazil, where I knew he’d won a league title with the famous Corinthians, but you have to move fast to keep up with Colin. He left Corinthians last year, and Veracruz are already his second team in Mexico (after a short spell with Lobos BUAP (nope, me neither); but his should not be a career unexamined. In a time when, until the recent trend for young talent to give it a go in the Bundesliga, Brits abroad were a rarity, Colin Kazim-Richards has lived the life exotic.

This colourful career began in earnest in more sedate surroundings. After time spent in youth teams at QPR and Arsenal he found his feet at Gigg Lane, home of Bury, making his professional debut and catching the eye in 2004-05. Even the first transfer of many had nothing ordinary about it as Kazim-Richards moved to Brighton and became known as the Coca Cola Kid, although had I been involved at the time I’d have pushed heavily for Coca Cola Colin. This is because the signing was part of a nationwide competition through the fizzy pop company to allow a football fan to sign a player.

That’s right, in days gone by you could drink Coke and win a player for your team. Brighton fan Aaron Berry beat over a million other entrants and won the £250,000 on offer. The Championship side promptly went against all parental advice throughout history, as they went and spent it all at once, on an 18-year-old Kazim–Richards. But the sugar rush high of the Coca Cola Kid perhaps inevitably didn’t last long, and he was moving on again just a year later. This time he spent one tumultuous, and ultimately doomed season in the Premier League with Sheffield United under Neil Warnock, a season best remembered for Sean Bean, Carlos Tevez and Phil Jagielka’s hand. It was clearly all too much for Colin, and he set off on his grand world adventure, starting with his spiritual home in Turkey.

The forward first joined Fenerbahce, where he played Champions League football (scoring against Chelsea), lined up alongside Roberto Carlos, was coached by the great Zico and won more than 30 caps for the Turkish national side, having qualified through his Turkish-Cypriot mother. Turkey remained his base until 2015 but you mustn’t think he settled. To do that would ignore the fact that he had loan spells in France, with Toulouse, in Greece with Olympiakos, and back in England with Blackburn Rovers, as well as doing the almost unthinkable by crossing the divide and joining Fenerbahce’s great rivals Galatasaray, the team his family supported. ‘Kaz’ got himself in the history books there by scoring the last ever goal in the Ali Sami Yen Stadium before both the club themselves, and he moved (again) – this time to Bursaspor.

When he was finally done with Turkey, he got a move to another of Europe’s grand old teams, signing for Feyenoord in the Eridivisie, first on loan, then permanently – well, as permanent as anything ever is with this guy – before a brief sojourn back in the British Isles with the green half of the Old Firm.

His time at Celtic was perhaps less than stellar, and in hindsight he became synonymous with the sort of mediocrity that Brendan Rodgers apparently swept away in his brave new dawn (now tarnished of course by Rodgers’ own recent moonlight flit for the riches on offer back South of the Border). But perhaps Glasgow, with the best will in the world, wasn’t exotic enough for our Colin, and when Rodgers showed him the door he promptly marched through it and straight onto a plane to Brazil. Of course he did.

He spent six months at Coritiba, before finding a home at Corinthians, where he only went and won the coveted league title, becoming a fan favourite along the way. Despite playing in the Fenerbahce- Galatasaray and the Celtic-Rangers derbies during his career he credits Brazilian fans as being the most passionate, and clearly they took to him. But like the Littlest Hobo or The Incredible Hulk before him, Colin doesn’t hang around long once he’s done his bit and fixed the problem at hand. And that’s why we currently finds him in Mexico, earning his pesos with Veracruz. Which is where we came in for a glance at this colourful career.

Colin’s a complicated character, on the one hand fighting the good fight against racism suffered by teammate Scott Sinclair while in Scotland, but on the other hand being cautioned by police while with Blackburn, for a homophobic gesture at Brighton fans. At times his behaviour on and off the pitch has been questionable, but some of it he would certainly attribute to kicking back against racism he has suffered himself, and his thirst for embracing new cultures and challenges is surely to be applauded. As I say, complicated.

In his own words, in a 2017 interview, Kazim-Richards quite rightly said “What journeyman has won what I’ve won? What journeyman has played at the clubs that I’ve played at?”, and he’s quite right of course. This is a player who has won trophies the world over and his life less ordinary can never be filed away as that of a journeyman. “The moves are who I am” he has said and at 32, he’s surely not done yet. A man with an equal passion for football and air miles like Kaz could still yet take a turn around the block in any of the burgeoning football hotbeds of China, India or the MLS in the USA. Who knows where he’ll finish up, or indeed where he’ll turn up next? Your guess is as good as mine, but we can guarantee it won’t be dull.

John Smith is Co-Author of ‘Booked! The Gospel According To Our Football Heroes