{"id":315992,"date":"2025-08-04T01:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T01:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/315992\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T01:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T01:44:11","slug":"graeme-souness-named-3-players-he-never-laid-a-finger-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/315992\/","title":{"rendered":"Graeme Souness Named 3 Players He \u2018Never Laid a Finger on\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>During his career, Graeme Souness was known for being an aggressive footballer in the middle of the park. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.givemesport.com\/tag\/liverpool\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Liverpool<\/a> icon&#8217;s job was to battle with the opposition&#8217;s midfielders and he wasn&#8217;t afraid to get a little rough when doing so. Souness is one of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.givemesport.com\/hardest-players-in-football-soccer-history-ranked\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the hardest footballers ever<\/a>, but this wasn&#8217;t out of the ordinary during that time period. Football as a whole used to be far more aggressive than the sport we see today. <\/p>\n<p>It was natural for teams to have certain players who could get physical with their opponents and Souness was one of the best at it. The Scotsman first made a name for himself at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.givemesport.com\/tag\/middlesbrough\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Middlesbrough<\/a> and spent six years playing for the club between 1972 and 1978. He represented them 141 times, but it wasn&#8217;t until he moved to Liverpool that he took things to an elite level. <\/p>\n<p>After missing out on the top flight title the season prior to Souness&#8217; arrival, Liverpool brought the midfielder in to wrestle back their crown at the top of the table and it certainly paid off. Following the midfielder&#8217;s arrival, the Reds won five of the next six league titles and he played a key role in that. Despite his incredible career, though, he revealed that there were three players he couldn&#8217;t even &#8216;lay a finger on&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>                        <strong>The Three Players Souness Couldn&#8217;t Touch<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>            One is a former Manchester United star<\/p>\n<p>While Souness had a reputation for getting rough and into it with his opponents, the former Liverpool man admitted that there were three players who he couldn&#8217;t even &#8216;lay a finger on&#8217; and those were Brazilian icon Zico, former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.givemesport.com\/tag\/manchester-united\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Manchester United<\/a> man John Giles and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.givemesport.com\/tag\/world-cup\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">World Cup<\/a> winner Alan Ball. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.balls.ie\/football\/graeme-souness-johnny-giles-437115\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">As quoted by Balls<\/a>, he said:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I say to people, there&#8217;s two players, there is now three. There are three players I&#8217;ve never laid a finger on in my career. You know, in those days that was part of my job because I was big for a midfield player and one was Zico, too cute, had the radar&#8230; another one was Alan Ball and I&#8217;ve got to throw Johnny Giles in there, you&#8217;ve reminded me. I caught Bremner a few times but could never lay a finger on Johnny.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>All statistics courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transfermarkt.co.uk\/graeme-souness\/leistungsdatenverein\/spieler\/116155\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Transfermarkt<\/a> and accurate as of 03\/08\/2025<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During his career, Graeme Souness was known for being an aggressive footballer in the middle of the park.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,393,4884,1860,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-315992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leeds","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-leeds","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114967967628513034","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}