The hard player: Kaba Diawara
Born on 16 December 1975 in Toulon, in the Var department, Kaba Diawara is a Guinean forward whose career stretched from the French leagues to the Turkish championship. His most significant club was the Girondins de Bordeaux, where he made 80 appearances and scored 18 goals. He also turned out for OGC Nice (39 matches, 12 goals), AC Ajaccio, and Gaziantepspor in Turkey, where he netted 11 goals in 32 games. Towards the end of his career, he had a spell at AC Arles-Avignon, adding 51 matches and 8 more goals.
With the Guinean national team, he earned 29 caps and scored 11 goals – a respectable return for a forward born in France who chose to represent Guinea. After hanging up his boots, he moved into football management.
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PlayThe medium player: Lassana Diarra
Born on 10 March 1985 in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, Lassana Diarra is a defensive midfielder who toured Europe’s biggest clubs throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Chelsea, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Portsmouth: his career reads like a whistle-stop tour of European football’s finest addresses. At Real Madrid alone he made 116 appearances, his longest stint at the top. He also earned 34 caps for the French national team, including a place at Euro 2008.
His path wasn’t without turbulence. After a contract dispute with Lokomotiv Moscow, where the club moved to cut his wages, he left and found himself hauled before FIFA for alleged breach of contract, forced to wait a year before signing anywhere new. His comeback destination? Olympique de Marseille, where he quickly became indispensable and even earned a recall to the France squad, despite having announced his international retirement two years earlier. On 21 February 2019, he terminated his contract with Paris Saint-Germain, drawing the curtain on nearly 15 years as a professional.
The easy player: David Luiz
Born on 22 April 1987 in Diadema, Brazil, David Luiz Moreira Marinho is a centre-back impossible to mistake for anyone else: curly hair, an attacking mindset and a constant presence in the headlines. He made his name at Benfica Lisbon from 2007, before joining Chelsea in January 2011 and winning the Champions League as early as 2012. Not bad for a defender so often turned into a meme. He holds both Brazilian and Portuguese nationality.
In 2014, PSG paid around 50 million euros to sign him, a world record fee for a defender at the time. Two years later, he retraced his steps back to Chelsea. In total, he clocked up more than 140 appearances in a Chelsea shirt during his first spell, and over 100 during the second. On the international stage, he won the 2013 Confederations Cup with Brazil and was part of the squad for the 2014 World Cup on home soil.