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Football

30th Apr 2016

A player born in 1999 has started in the Premier League for the first time

Tom Victor

Football offers its very own Prince tribute.

West Bromwich Albion are partying like it’s 1999.

Remember 1999? Manchester United were winning the treble, the Backstreet Boys were top of the charts with ‘I Want it That Way’ and people could still get justifiably angry if you spoiled The Sixth Sense for them.

Remember? Jonathan Leko doesn’t.

Because it was also the year that WBA forward Leko was born, and the 17-year-old was the first child of ’99 to start a Premier League game when he took to the field against West Ham United.

Leko, who has already made a couple of substitute appearances for Albion, was born one week before ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ first aired on TV.

He wasn’t p*ssed off after the release of Star Wars Episode I because he was less than a month old when it came out.

Oh, and Gareth McAuley, who will start alongside the youngster, had been of legal drinking age for nearly 18 months before Leko was born.

It could be worse – just wait until there’s a Premier League player who was born in the 21st century.

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