Tevez, Eto’o and Gyan are among the latest breed of players to be tarred with the ‘football mercenary’ brush. But they have nothing on this 1970s Scoop comic superstar.

Jon Stark arrived on the football scene in the late 1970s, a prolific striker who played for numerous clubs in England and abroad on a nomadic career path motivated entirely by money. A self-styled ‘Matchwinner for Hire’, his terms of service were set out on his business card: ‘£1,000 per match plus £250 per goal, no payment for lost games.’ Playing for different clubs every week, wherever the promise of payment took him, Stark was the ultimate football mercenary. He was, of course, entirely fictional – a comic book character created against the backdrop of a real-life transfer revolution under the strapline: ‘Meet the Footballer of the Future…’

Read the full story in issue 2 of Late Tackle magazine.

Paul Football Late Tackle