6 pairs of Premier League footballers we can’t believe were team-mates elsewhere
We’re now so used to seeing Mohamed Salah at Liverpool, Kevin De Bruyne at Manchester City and Son Heung-min at Tottenham that it feels weird to imagine them in other colours, lining up alongside other familiar Premier League faces when they were away from the spotlight.
We can’t explain why it feels so unnerving to find out that certain players were once team-mates elsewhere, it just does.
Here are six pairs of Premier League footballers we can’t believe played alongside one another elsewhere.
Mohamed Salah & Fabian Schar
Salah alongside Micah Richards at Fiorentina was one of those ‘little-known’ footballing factoids that it actually ended up becoming widely known in the end.
Like how people kept calling Luka Modric underrated so often that it stopped being true.
So we’re going back to Salah’s early days at Basel, when he was coming up alongside Schar, now something of a stalwart at Newcastle United. The pair made 59 appearances alongside one another, winning back-to-back Swiss Super League titles in 2012-13 and 2013-14.
Other notable figures from that dressing room included Yann Sommer, Mohamed Elneny, Philipp Degen and Taulent Xhaka, Granit’s older brother, who remains with his hometown club to this day.
Yannick Bolasie & Bruno Fernandes
We all know about Fernandes’ time at Sporting Lisbon, where he established himself as one of European football’s top playmakers before moving to Manchester United.
But did you know that late Barclays era cult hero Bolasie briefly crossed paths with Portugal international, having spent the 2019-20 campaign at the Estadio Jose Alvalade out on loan from Everton?
“Bruno, to be honest if you’re saying the person who has created the most chances for man, you have to say Bruno,” Bolasie reminisced on his time playing alongside Fernandes on the Filthy Fellas podcast.
“I only ended up scoring three goals for Sporting and I should have scored nine. The balls he was putting in were different.
“When he came Prem I said it, I said this guy is going to be a problem.
“He is the one who showed me the roots to the stats, of how to work the stats. It was mad in Portugal what Bruno could do. His ability is mad. He could play a game and if he scores that game was going to end 1-0.”
Kevin De Bruyne & Niclas Fullkrug
De Bruyne is a proper modern-day Premier League legend, no doubt about it.
The jury remains out on Fullkrug, but the early impressions give us the distinct whiff of yet another failed West Ham striker. Let’s wait and see, but it would be no shock at all if he’s back out on loan at Werder Bremen at the start of next season.
It’s weird to think now that the two players once lined up alongside one another at Werder Bremen, over a decade ago now.
De Bruyne was a highly-rated rising star out on loan from Chelsea during the 2012-13 season, while Fullkrug – two years his junior – was a fresh-faced young buck emerging from the academy.
De Bruyne also played alongside Marko Arnautovic, ex-Arsenal defender Sokratis and Felix Kroos, Toni’s younger brother, during his year at the Weserstadion.
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Son Heung-min & Rafael Van Der Vaart
No, not at White Hart Lane. Sonny and Van Der Vaart belong to two distinctly different Tottenham eras. Son was signed by Spurs in the summer of 2015, three years after Van Der Vaart’s departure.
After leaving Spurs, the Dutch midfielder joined Hamburg, where a fresh-faced young Sonny was developing his skills. They spent the 2012-13 season together with the Bundesliga club, who finished that year in seventh place, Son their top scorer with 12 league goals.
Paul Scharner, Michael Mancienne, Jeffrey Bruma and Christian Norgaard were also part of that season’s squad. Some mix, that.
“We had a really good connection. He was like a little boy at the time, barely out of his teens,” Van der Vaart recalled in an interview with The Athletic.
“I saw straight away that I need to play with him because I thought that us as a combination we could win some games. And that’s what we did.
“He became so good because he played one year with me. You have to ask him that, I always tell him that.”
William Saliba & Wesley Fofana
Nowadays Saliba is fulfilling his promise as one of the best centre-backs in European football, having demonstrated that immense potential when first breaking through at Saint-Etienne.
Their dressing room back then was a wild mix of Francophone players who spent time on either side of the Tyne-Wear divide – Yann M’Vila! Mathieu Debuchy! Remy Cabella! Yohan Cabaye! Wahbi Khazri!
Any of those would’ve been a decent pick, but we couldn’t look beyond Chelsea’s Fofana, who was also making a name for himself as one for the future at the Ligue 1 club.
The pair lined up alongside one another 12 times, mostly in the 2019-20 season, and kept clean sheets in wins over Bordeaux, Nice and Monaco.
READ: 8 legendary goalscorers we can’t believe never won a Premier League Golden Boot
Ollie Watkins & Clinton Morrison
To borrow a phrase from Danny Dyer, it freaks our nut that Aston Villa hotshot Watkins once scored a goal assisted by Morrison, who made his Premier League debut for Crystal Palace before the 1998 World Cup.
That goal was an injury-time equaliser in a League Two fixture, Exeter at home to Portsmouth, back in March 2016. Watkins was a 20-year-old emerging from the academy while Morrison was a 35-year-old experienced journeyman winding down his career.
“He deserves everything he is going to get. I tipped him to be a superstar and he will play international football,” former Republic of Ireland international Morrison said during a Sky Sports interview with Watkins back in 2020, when he was still at Brentford.
“I remember you always saying [at Exeter] you have got to stay in the box and it will come to you,” Watkins responded.
“This year I have adapted and learnt how to get those tap-in goals, the easy goals that are sometimes the hardest.
“I am really enjoying it this year and hopefully I can go and score some more goals.”