From the reluctant Putin party activist Roman Pavlyuchenko to the charismatic union man Derek Dougan, players who have turned to the political field and have made an impact right, left and centre

1) Roman Pavlyuchenko

Harry Redknapp rarely saw eye to eye with Roman Pavlyuchenko. The Russian signed for Tottenham Hotspur for £14m after impressing for Russia at Euro 2008, scoring in that memorable 3-1 win over Holland in the quarter-final, and there were high hopes for him at White Hart Lane.

Yet Pavlyuchenko had big boots to fill. Dimitar Berbatov had ambled off to Manchester United for £30m, Robbie Keane had joined Liverpool, his boyhood club, and Tottenham started the season badly under Juande Ramos. When Ramos was sacked and replaced by Redknapp at the end of October, Tottenham were bottom and had an unspecified number of points from an unspecified number of games.

It was difficult for Pavlyuchenko to settle. He was in an unfamiliar country, the team was struggling and although Pavlyuchenko ended up scoring 15 goals in his first season with the club, his performances were largely underwhelming. He scored 42 goals in three and a half years for Spurs, eventually joining Lokomotiv Moscow in January 2012.

Then again, maybe his mind was occupied by matters away from the pitch. In 2007, Pavlyuchenko’s international team-mate, Andrey Arshavin, ran on a pro-Kremlin ticket for Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in regional council elections in Russia in 2007, only to withdraw before a vote was cast. A year later, Pavlyuchenko went one better and was elected as a city council deputy in his home town of Stavropol, the United Russia party winning 63% of the vote.

It was said that Pavlyuchenko’s foray into politics was a joint decision between him and Putin’s party, although doubts were raised over his interest. “He’s not from Moscow. He’s a village guy,” Anton Lisin, a football commentator with Sovietsky Sport said at the time. “The only reason Pavlyuchenko might be interested in politics is if the international financial crisis affected his wages.”

Pavlyuchenko, meanwhile, was unsure how he was going to combine his political duties with his football career. All of which raises a pertinent question: has Putin ever told Pavlyuchenko to “fucking run around a bit”? JS

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Roman Pavlyuchenko, standing just behind Vladimir Putin during a Moscow meeting with other leading Russian athletes in March 2012. Photograph: RIA Novosti/Reuters

2) Gianni Rivera

It’s fairly peculiar for the girth of a stripe to introduce frisson to strides, but it is biologically impossible not to becomed aroused by the Milan jersey of the late 60s. Unashamedly v-neck with colours far narrower than the modern bent, it combines the darkest black with a red that wasn’t so much deep as profound; not much about the late 60s was minimalist or timeless, but this was indisputably that.

And that was just at rest! At play, it got to be worn by the amazing Gianni Rivera, who likewise got to wear the amazing it – most famously, when presiding over some upstart kid called Cruyff in the 1969 European Cup final.

Born in Alessandria, il golden boy made his debut for his local team aged just 15, before moving to Milan a year later for a record fee of $200,000. In the first instance he was shy and frail, not qualities usual for the time and place, but eventually, his class proved insurmountable, his excellence amid the violence and negativity testament to spirit as much as talent.

A beautiful mover, incisive thinker, and epochal hair-haver, Rivera was one of football’s great artists; “He doesn’t touch the ball. He brushes it,” wrote Gianni Mottana. But, like all the very best stylists, at its core was pure substance. Captaining a side that also included Fabio Cudicini, Roberto Rosato and Giovanni Trapattoni, Rivera made 501 appearances for Milan, winning three titles, four cups, two Cup Winners’ Cups, two European Cups and one World Club Cup. He remains Serie A’s highest-scoring midfielder, and in 1972-73, managed a staggering 17 goals in 30 games.

Rivera also did his bit for intra-Milan rivalry. First he accused referees of bias against his club, and then criticised Italy’s selection of Armando Picchi, captain of La Grande Inter, on the basis that fielding a libero against the best sides was tantamount to playing them with 10 men. But that was just the start of his local difficulties with the national team. By the second round of the 1970 World Cup, Ferruccio Valcareggi had decided it was impossible for Rivera to play in the same team as the great Sandro Mazzola, so devised a system that he called stafetta, relay, in which the stronger Mazzola played the first half before Rivera came on at the interval. And briefly, it worked; Rivera scored a crucial goal in the quarter-final and the winner in the classic semi against West Germany, before in the final, he was allotted just the final six minutes, by which time the game was over.

Retiring in 1979, Rivera stayed at San Siro as an administrator, eventually becoming club vice-president. But when Silvio Berlusconi and his right-wing politics took over in 1986, he was demoted and forced to resign.

So Rivera, who had been instrumental in the formation of the Italian players union – traditionally, Milan is the club of the workers, inasmuch as it’s possible to be reductive about these things – entered politics. It is unlikely that this surprised too many of his former team-mates, among whom he was not exactly renowned for his bashfulness, but for those not privy to dressing-room secrets, the giveaway, once again, was the hair, now a fully-fledged bouncy number possessed of its own character and legal status.

Initially a centrist, between 1987 and 2001, he served four consecutive terms for the centre-left coalition, including one spent as an under-secretary in the defence ministry of Romano Prodi’s government. In 2005, he became an MEP, a post he retained until 2009. DH

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gianni Rivera sits with Milan’s president Silvio Berlusconi at the San Siro in July 1999. Photograph: Reuters Photographer/Reuters

3) George Weah

George Weah picked the ball up inside his own area and then he set off. He ran. And he ran. And he ran. And he ran. The Verona players were gasping as they tried to keep up with him. Weah made it over the halfway line and then, a little fortunately, he bundled through a couple of challenges and made his way towards the Verona goal. He beat one more defender and he shot low and hard with his right foot, the ball zipping across the turf and into the bottom-right corner. It was 1996 and the San Siro crowd had been treated to a moment of genius. It was Weah at his best, fast, skilful and audacious, and demonstrated why he was the holder of the Ballon d’Or and the Fifa World Player of the Year award. For many, he is the greatest African footballer of all time.

Weah’s life has taken a different turn since he retired, though. The Liberian is a politician now and leads the Congress for Democratic Change, which was formed in 2004, the year after the end of the second Liberian civil war. He ran for the presidency in 2005 but lost to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, before losing again as a vice-presidential candidate in 2011. According to many political pundits, Weah had been held back by his lack of academic credentials; he bamboozled his opponents when he was a footballer, but this was different. Since those setbacks, however, he has completed high school and graduated with both a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree from DeVry University.

Last year, Weah ran for a seat in the senate in Montserrado County. He was up against President Sirleaf’s son, Robert, and the election had to be delayed because of the Ebola crisis. It was held in December, Weah won 78% of the vote and they say he is preparing to run in the presidential elections in 2017. JS

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A supporter holds a poster with images of presidential candidate Winston Tubman and his running-mate George Weah of the Congress for Democratic Change in Monrovia before the 2011 presidential elections. Photograph: Luc Gnago/Reuters

4) Romário

You might have thought Romário would be a bit tired by now. All the partying, all the football, that rather dubious quest to reach 1,000 goals – he was never really a man for sitting still and that holds true now, nine months before his 50th birthday.

Romário’s football career has long since finished but it segued nicely into another calling that requires point-scoring of a different kind. Never one who you could imagine poring over legislation or launching into impassioned anti-corruption speeches, his time in politics to date has proved people wrong. In October 2010 Romário, who was not exactly known for his diligence as a footballer beyond appearances in opponents’ penalty areas of a weekend, saw some hard canvassing come to fruition when he was elected as a federal deputy in Rio de Janeiro. He received 150,000 votes, making him the sixth most voted-for deputy in the state, which currently has 70 seats in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies.

Easy to attract a popular vote when you’re one of the highest-profile figures in the world’s most revered football country, you might say, but there was a “nothing to lose” feeling among many when Romário announced his candidature for the Brazilian Socialist Party, with the public at large feeling disillusioned with the questionable levels of integrity and transparency in Brazil’s politics and encouraged by the fact that Romário had come from a poor background.

“I’m still learning the trade,” said Romário in an interview at the time. “I’m not a full politician but I was the best in my profession and was always under pressure.” He has thrived since then. Ascribing much of his political epiphany to the birth of his daughter, Ivy, with Down’s syndrome in 2005, Romário has been an energetic campaigner for the disabled – something that became relevant to football before last year’s World Cup, when he lobbied for greater wheelchair facilities at matches.

Romário was also a prominent voice concerning the tournament’s impact on Brazil – writing an article for the Guardian a year before the event. Since then, his political stock has risen yet further: he was elected to the senate last October, winning 63.4% of the vote and an incredible 4.5 million in total, for the Rio seat – a record number for a representative of the state.

There are those who doubt him – and the histrionics that peppered his football career do not easily dislodge themselves from the memory – but his influence seems likely to grow and grow.

While we are here, what about an old frienemy of Romário’s? Telepathic though they may have been during the 1994 World Cup, Romário and Bebeto never saw eye to eye as players and they are on different sides politically now. Bebeto represents the centre-left Democratic Labour Party and was re-elected as a state deputy in October. “My relationship with Romário is that he’ll be my friend for life, forever. It’s just that he has his ideas, and I have mine,” he said in 2013, suggesting that he has the diplomacy to take him all the way to the top. NA

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brazilian senator Romário poses for a picture during the inauguration session in the plenary of the Brazilian Federal Senate in Brasília earlier this year. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

5) Kaj Leo Johannesen

See the goalkeeper who makes a solid save against the Belgians here? Looks as if he could have a bright future, no? Kaj Leo Johannesen was actually 27 at the time and primarily concerned with nailing down a place as the Faroe Islands’ first-choice goalkeeper. He had been virtually ever-present in the squad for the team’s historic first competitive internationals but generally lost out to the long-serving, bobble-hatted Jens-Martin Knudsen between the posts and had to content himself with a place on the bench. This, for all that Johannesen performed admirably during this 3-0 defeat in June 1992, was only his third cap and ended up being his penultimate one; despite winning three Faroese league titles with HB Torshavn and appearing in both the Uefa Cup and the Cup Winners’ Cup, he was never quite able to shake off the “bridesmaid” tag for the national team.

Still, Knudsen was a sickeningly good sporting talent by most measures. He also played for Kyndil, the most successful handball team in the Faroes, and scored an average of almost four goals a game. What more could anyone want from this all-rounder – run the country?

Well, OK then. Sixteen years and three months after that World Cup qualifier with Belgium, Johannesen was sworn in as the Faroe Islands’ prime minister, his Union Party heading up a three-party coalition. He had only retired from football a few years previously, making the odd comeback after first hanging up his boots in 1998. By that time he was already involved in the local political scene, taking a seat on the city council of Torshavn, the capital, between 1997 and 2001. But his rise to premiership made him the first person in history to play international football and proceed to become a head of state, a role in which he has remained ever since.

Johannesen’s rise from municipal to national politics began when he was elected to the legislative assembly in 2002, before becoming the Union Party’s leader two years later. It should be re-emphasised that he still played the occasional game for HB II, his old club’s reserve team, throughout all this. His politics are said to sit a little to the right of centre, and favour close EU cooperation.

Now 50, it seems that Johannesen is not done with football quite yet. There’s no need for stagey keepy-uppy shots to convince the public of his affection for the beautiful game, and nor is there any requirement for fumbling explanations as to which team he really, definitely, totally supports. As recently as 23 August 2014, he turned out for HB II in a match against FC Suouroy, keeping a handy clean sheet for his team. Perhaps David Cameron could be persuaded to do the same for Aston Villa, or West Ham if he really prefers – although plumping for the latter might suddenly make those Olympic Stadium ticket prices seem rather steep after all. NA

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Faroe Islands prime minister Kaj Leo Johannesen, left, shakes hands with Finnish PM Matti Vanhanen, as they follow Sweden’s prime minister Fredrik Reinfeld, prior to the 2009 Nordic prime minister’s meeting in Eldborg, Iceland. Photograph: Brynjar Gauti/AP

6) Derek Dougan

There is nothing in life so good that it comes without downside; the very best moment is forever haunted by the reality that everything subsequent will be worse, and then you die. Similarly, personal qualities are inextricably linked to related deficiencies, even for our various divinities; the implacable commitment to justice and discipline is all very well, but precisely why even they stop short of praising the standard of their company.

Alexander Derek Dougan epitomised opposites of this ilk. Doog, or The Doog – he was both proper noun and definite article, though never El Doogerino, even if you weren’t into the whole brevity thing – was a man of his time and an icon for all-time. Amazingly fast and adept in any position, he was a footballer in the truest sense of the word, also understanding that the game was meant to be enjoyed, and, wherever possible, at an opponent’s expense. As such, he remains a hero to supporters of various clubs, but at Wolves in particular, where his moniker was daubed on walls around the town in one of the earliest examples of footballing graffiti and probably the first to feature nothing more than a nickname.

But The Doog stood for more than simple ball-kicking, into things, opinions about things, and keeping people apprised of the details. There’s not much point letting your feet do the talking when you’re the proud owner of human sentience, let alone a majestic temper, fearless spirit and venomous tongue.

In particular, Dougan battled the macro- and micro-aggressions used respectively to suppress and demean footballers by the director class which had expropriated the working man’s game. Born in Belfast, he began his professional career locally, with Distillery, before joining Portsmouth in 1957. At the time, the maximum wage was still operative, a rule which had, to widespread excitement, released the country from the burden of watching an extraordinary talents such as John Charles – and later, Jimmy Greaves and Denis Law – all of whom left for Italy.

After two years on the south coast, The Doog moved to Blackburn, and his two goals in the Cup semi-final were enough to defeat Sheffield Wednesday; after scoring the second, he visited a defender left floundering to wonder how many tickets he’d like for Wembley. In the event, Dougan almost didn’t play, bluffing through a late fitness test before handing in a transfer request on the morning of the game – which, ironically, was against Wolves. The problem was both the club – “I could not shake off a depression that caused me to wake each day regretting that I had to go to the ground” – and its haughty directors. Their attitude was encapsulated, felt The Doog, when one of them boarded the team bus to present the players with boiled sweets, combining patronising pat on the head with self-conscious self-congratulation.

So, in the summer of 1961, he moved to Aston Villa, leaving for Peterborough United two years later after falling out with Joe Mercer. By this time, the PFA’s threat of strike action had forced the lifting of the maximum wage, but the game was not cured of structural ills. Dougan was irate to discover that at London Road, there existed a tea-room for the post-match use of directors’ wives, while those of the players were forced to hang around outside, but within two years he earned a move to Leicester, accepting a reduced salary so to do. On the pitch, things went well, but he did not get on with the manager, Matt Gillies, who disapproved of his joining the PFA committee; that Gillies was himself a former delegate only compounded the disgust. Then, before an away game, Gillies requested that he carry the chairman’s bag on to the coach, prompting The Doog to wonder as to the kind of illness or disability that prevented him from doing it for himself.

So in 1967, he left, joining Wolves just in time for Hey Doog to become a terrace classic – some recompense for the chronological misfortune that deprived him of the nickname Snoop and its various lyrical accoutrements. He settled immediately, marking his home debut with an exuberant, expert’s hat-trick, his flair for celebration as much in evidence as his flair in front of goal. “They came, they saw, he conquered,” declared a breathless Express & Star, sentiments experienced with equal intensity but less pleasure by the Leicester fans in the crowd, who turned up, colours and all, to support their man and register vex with their board.

Though the team soon lost its young star, Peter Knowles, who retired at 24 to become a Jehovah’s Witness, the loss was quickly offset by the emergence of John Richards. His pace, presence and goalscoring prowess allowed Dougan licence to roam; previously, he had, in classic British style, been shoved up front on account of being big and tall, with little regard to his touch and creativity.

Which is not to say that everything at Wolves met with Doog’s approval; he was unimpressed, for example, by the banning of players from the club’s office suite. But by this time, his quest for justice had a wider focus, taking in player behaviour and referee pay, among other things.

The key issue of the day, though, was freedom of contract, and The Doog, the last person to consider himself a chattel, took a keen interest. His interest in politics had been foreshadowed by an obsession with his appearance – in 1961, he had shaved his hair in the hope that it would grow back thicker, before segueing from mohawk to weave – and in 1967, offered himself for PFA chairman. But though he lost the appointment to Terry Neill, the perceived safer choice, he retained his ambition and conviction.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Derek Dougan at a players’ union meeting. Photograph: ANL/Rex Shutterstock

No doubt those who made the decision were praising their prescience, when, in 1969, The Doog was sent off twice in quick succession. The second of these dismissals triggered a disciplinary hearing, at which he was convicted on the word of linesman who claimed to have been sworn at, and banned for a remarkable 56 days; a book he published shortly afterwards revealed his continuing displeasure:

“The hearings give me an impression of a Star Chamber with a bucket of whitewash on one side of the bench and a bed of nails on the others, most players would prefer an independent tribunal with much wider representation, including the Professional Footballers’ Association. Why are players not legally represented at these hearings? They are not always articulate or confident enough to press their own cases. If a player is in danger of being suspended or fined he ought to have legal representation, preferably a solicitor engaged by the PFA.”

The following year, the discussion of players’ rights and free agency began in earnest, Dougan becoming increasingly agitated with Neill’s deferential stance. So, when Neill accepted a manager’s job, he took advantage of Bobby Charlton’s absence with cup commitments to seize the top job at the ensuing committee meeting.

Dougan’s charismatic outspokenness on all aspects of the game made him an obvious choice, when, in 1970, ITV instituted a studio panel as part of its World Cup coverage. His acerbic wit and obstreperous opinions were central to the continuing success of the format, his colleagues’ pontifications about total football punctured with “What is it? All I know is Total petrol,” while he called Italian and German teams “peasants” on account of their sweeper system, more of which shortly.

In 1972, at the height of the Troubles, Dougan, by now captain of his country, published an autobiography entitled The Sash He Never Wore, and then, the following summer, tried in vain to organise a pre-season tournament that would bring Leeds United, Manchester United, Wolves and Liverpool to Belfast. He did, though, with the help of Johnny Giles, set up a friendly in which Brazil took on a united Ireland side – the team had to be called “Shamrock Rovers Select XI”. Still, St Patrick’s Brass and Reed Band played A Nation Once Again, and 34,000 people turned up to enjoy.

A year later, Dougan instituted the first PFA awards, the aim to raise the profile of the players, and also that season, helped Wolves win the League Cup. Interviewed by Brian Moore in the immediate aftermath, it was put to him in typical statement-style that the moment had to be the greatest of his career, but typically, Doog thought otherwise, citing his PFA chairmanship as a more significant honour.

Dougan left Wolves in 1975, joining Kettering Town as manager. His team was the first to realise its commercial value, wearing advertising on its shirts and, in April 1978, the collective bargaining position he established for all players finally secured their freedom of contract. He retired shortly afterwards, and during that summer’s World Cup, joined Denis MacShane – later of expense-fiddling fame – in delivering a football to the Argentinian embassy, covered in the names of various trade unionists, socialists and journalists imprisoned by the country’s military junta.

There followed various misadventure – his time as chairman of Wolves ended in failure, so too his efforts to set up the Duncan Edwards Sports Medicine Centre. Then, in 1997, he had a near-fatal heart attack so, naturally, stood for election to Parliament immediately afterwards in his home constituency of Belfast East. His ticket, proposing integrated education, a referendum on the province’s political future, and peace through appreciation of difference, attracted just 542 votes, 1.4% of the total cast; one of his sons later pointed out the spookiness of the coincidence that saw him publish an updated autobiography around the same time, with unusual success.

Even so, the move highlighted once again the brilliance of a character who understood that football is about more than a few blokes kicking a ball around. And, er, then he, er, became, er, a spokeman for, er, Ukip. DH