When you hear the words ‘Liverpool’ and ‘suits’, your mind probably goes to the Spice Boys and their bright white get-up.
Former Anfield favourite Jason McAteer shed some more light on that when he spoke to SportsJOE earlier this month, but now there’s another photo of suited and booted Reds players which is doing the rounds.
The club have released the following shot to mark their partnership with Hugo Boss, and one thing immediately springs to mind.
We’ll let you take a look and see if you think the same.
Boss tha – #LFC sign new partnership deal with Hugo Boss https://t.co/9zvPEKwlus pic.twitter.com/GUkiKQENlu
— Liverpool FC News (@LivEchoLFC) October 12, 2016
Now, maybe it’s just because we’re still reminiscing about Team Nebula and whatever the boys’ one was called, but there’s something very Apprentice-y about the pose of the seven Liverpool players.
And that got us thinking – what sort of candidates would they be if asked to go on the show and put forward some business ideas of their own?
Simon Mignolet
Mignolet gets through to the interviews stage before tearfully admitting to Claude that his job as a director of an education consultancy actually means he was coaching his son’s football team after school.
Claude decides to humour him, asking if he took part in the sessions himself. When Mignolet mentions that he played in goal he burst out laughing.
Loris Karius
Karius is the unfortunate stooge in the episode where his team has to put together an on-the-fly advert for some kind of cleaning product or vodka or superfood or whatever they do these days.
He’s actually doing a pretty good job of it too, until a cheesy turn to camera that makes Frank Underwood look subtle. No idea why they left it in the final cut. Still, they sold a hell of a lot of ‘Lyqwidyze’ in that shopping centre (we tried to come up with a brand name that could still be any of those products – how did we do?).
Joel Matip
Matip does a good job keeping a low profile in the early rounds, so much show that he rocks up in the boardroom in week nine and you can’t remember ever seeing him before.
You decide to watch back to see if he was really there. Sure enough, there’s a well-placed ‘good idea’ here and an ‘I’m not sure about that’ there. Somehow he’s been on the winning team every time.
Emre Can
Can is the star of the show in weeks one and two, and people are talking about him as a real contender to win the whole thing.
But then it all goes to shit in week three when he confuses cloves and bulbs of garlic for a street food task and ends up with a pasta dish so bland it causes one passer-by to kick him in the shins.
Philippe Coutinho
Mobile phone shop manager Coutinho has some slick suits and absolutely no morals. It’s all a front, though, and he has a nervous breakdown when his failure to book the clown sees Team Phallic lose the kid’s party challenge.
Sure, the internet didn’t *need* to meme his crying face for several weeks, but at least he’s the one guy who everyone will remember on the greatest hits DVD.
Jordan Henderson
Jordan Henderson talks a good game, finishes every sentence with Lord Sugar, and has two mobile phones. You know someone’s a winner when they’ve got two mobile phones.
If only he hadn’t forgotten to order the milk for the ice cream making challenge, ruining everything. Weird that he asked for seconds in the losers’ cafe, mind you.
Daniel Sturridge
Sturridge hates his fellow contenders. Despises them. He’s got no time for corporate bullshit and sales talk, and you can see him visibly grimacing whenever someone says ‘Bluesky thinking’ or ‘touch base’.
It’s this resentment which helped him stay focused and put his personal vendetta to one side in the opening weeks, taking out his anger in the winners’ go-karting day, when he gets a bit too competitive for our liking. Seriously, people walked away with bruises.
He ends up winning after his business idea – mittens for cats – is the only one which Lord Sugar finds viable. You don’t even want to know what the other two candidates had in mind.
