Colin Kazim-Richards: the extraordinary career of the Coca-Cola Kid

[jdrobbo]

Do you remember entering a competition sponsored by Coca-Cola, early on in Steve C’s reign, in the hope that you’d help fund a £1 million signing for Burnley?

Having just clocked that Colin Kazim-Richards is now playing back in England (for Derby), I thought I’d remind you of that story! Rather than Ken it myself, here are some paragraphs, taken from wearebrighton.com:

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“Between 2015 and 2019, Brighton and Hove Albion spent £229.45 million on new players. That could buy you over 218 million cans of Coca Cola down your local Waitrose – and yet as recently as 2005, the Albion had to rely on winning a competition sponsored by the drinks manufacture to afford a £250,000 signing from Bury by the name of Colin Kazim-Richards. This is the story of the Coca Cola Kid....

We begin in the summer of 2004. Coca Cola had just taken up sponsorship of the Football League from Nationwide. With a team of marketeers who managed to turn a jumped-up Eddie Stobart lorry into one of the highlights of Christmas, the company soon set their mind to how they could use the English professional league as a vehicle to promote their brand.
Throughout the 2004-05 season, we saw the Coca Cola logo changed into the colours of all 72 Football League teams. And it was beamed onto prominent advertising spots around the country. Genuinely, it was a big deal seeing “Brighton and Hove Albion” in blue and white splashed across Piccadilly Circus.

That wasn’t enough though and so midway through the campaign, Coca Cola launched a competition. Buy a Coke, enter the draw and you could win £250,000 for your club to spend on a player of their choice. There had never been anything like it.

Football clubs and supporters went mad for it. Clubs wanted the prize and therefore encouraged their supporters to buy as many bottles of Coca Cola as possible to give them a greater chance of winning; supporters for their part were desperate to be the ones who helped buy that striker who fired their team to promotion. It was the sort of competition that would have had Jamie Oliver and his anti-sugar agenda spinning in his grave.

Coca Cola received over 1.1 million entries for the competition. The winner was Brighton fan Aaron Berry and suddenly, Mark McGhee had an unexpected boost to his summer 2005 transfer budget – a quarter of a million pounds, a fee the size of which the Albion last spent on a player during their 1980s heyday 20 years previously.

Because Coca Cola wanted to promote the fact that they’d helped a club buy a player, one of the terms and conditions of the competition was that the signing had to be made by the end of August.

McGhee and Dick Knight didn’t need that long. They already knew who they wanted to make the first Coca Cola bought player – 18-year-old Colin Kazim-Richards from Bury.

Kazim-Richards had first been recommended to McGhee by a scout who’d watched the young forward playing for Bury’s Under 18s against Middlesbrough several months earlier.
He’d since gone onto score three goals in 30 appearances for the Shakers, attracting the interests of Premier League-bound Wigan Athletic and Brighton’s Championship rivals Stoke City and Leicester City.

Kazim-Richards was destined to leave Gigg Lane that summer. He knew about the interest from clubs higher up the pyramid and rejected a new deal with Bury, leaving him out of contract.

Because of his age, whoever signed him on a free would have had to pay a modest fee set out by a tribunal. With their long-standing interest, Brighton would surely have been in for him anyway.

The Coca Cola money now gave them an advantage – they could offer Bury cash up front to secure Kazim-Richards’ services before he became a free agent.
After some intense negotiations, that’s exactly what happened. Brighton (and Coca Cola) paraded Colin Kazim-Richards as an Albion player on June 30th 2005.

Expectations were high. Not only did Kazim-Richards have to deal with the pressure of being the first ever Coca Cola player, but he was also coming into a side who’d survived relegation by the skin of their teeth in 2004-05.
What’s more, Knight had begun his dangerous game of selling off the family silver and not replacing it. The Albion had been relatively safe at Christmas time until the sales of Danny Cullip and Darren Currie to Sheffield United and Ipswich Town were sanctioned with no real replacements coming in.

Dan Harding had now gone on a free to The Leeds United and top scorer Adam Virgo had been sold for £1.5m to Celtic. With Leon Knight yet to convince at Championship level and McGhee’s other striking options being Mark McCammon (last seen getting chucked off the team coach away at Burnley), Jake Robinson and Chris McPhee, Kazim-Richards found himself with a lot of goal scoring responsibility on his shoulders.

McGhee for his part tried to play it down. He said upon the christening of Colin Kazim-Richards as the Coca Cola Kid, “Since it was announced that we had won the money, I had been determined that the money should be invested and not spent without any return.”
“I think Colin represents exactly that: an investment. Colin is a player for the future of this club and hopefully we will benefit from this signing in the long term.”

Knight was a lot less restrained in his views. He told The Argus: “I don’t want to make undue comparisons with Bobby (Zamora), because that would be unfair on Colin and put too much pressure on him, but I get the same sort of feeling about him.”

The first ever player brought by Coca Cola? Tick. Expected to get the goals to keep a woeful Brighton squad up? Tick. Comparisons to Bobby Zamora? Tick. Poor Colin, he never stood a chance of living up to all that hype. But then again, he didn’t help himself either.
We did see flashes of brilliance in Kazim-Richards’ one season at the Albion. Withdean during the 2005-06 campaign was never likely to be the place for it to come out regularly though.

As predicted, the Albion endured a terrible year to finish stone cold bottom of the table. At times, frustration shone through for Kazim-Richards and he stroppily tore around the pitch like a petulant child...”


Here is Richards’ career to date:

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60 career goals..

...and Sam Vokes got 56 for Burnley alone!

[JohnMac]

Hardly rose to the occasion anywhere during his long career aside from Feyenoord on loan. Made up for that by reverting to type once contracted.

[Burnley1989]

Rings a bell

[ClaretTony]

The Coca Cola things you had to collect you couldn’t get in Burnley

[ksrclaret]

Brilliant story. Well worth revisiting, that one.

I'd imagined he'd be one of those players who'd just disappear off the face of the earth after some highly disappointing spells at various clubs, but I watched Derby on Sky the other day and he was their best player by a mile. I couldn't believe it was him and he was still playing.

[jdrobbo]

The Coca Cola things you had to collect you couldn’t get in Burnley

Am I right in recalling you complaining that you couldn’t get said item in Burnley snd you ended up with a massive case of Coca Cola delivered to your door?

[Clarets4me]

So, he didn't turn out to be " The Real Thing " after all ....

[jdrobbo]

Haha, I see what you did there!

[ClaretTony]

Am I right in recalling you complaining that you couldn’t get said item in Burnley snd you ended up with a massive case of Coca Cola delivered to your door?

You certainly are right and they still didn’t have the promotion stickers on

[Winstonswhite]

17 clubs-scoring for all but one of them- in 8 different countries, is some career.

[tim_noone]

What a good career he Appears to have had travelling round the World...as opposed to clocking on in a factory every day or sitting at a desk... imo he had a good agent. Good to see he didnt settle for the comfort zone!

[burnmark]

Gave us a bit of grief on social media didn’t he on one occasion whilst he was at Blackburn (or he’d just left). Something along the lines of he’d never play for such an insignificant club as ourselves?

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Gave us a bit of grief on social media didn’t he on one occasion whilst he was at Blackburn (or he’d just left). Something along the lines of he’d never play for such an insignificant club as ourselves?

Looking at that list of clubs, I think he played for clubs even more insignificant..

[jdrobbo]

He really has played for some very prestigious clubs, hasn’t he?

[DomBFC1882]

I'm sure Sheffield United would have him back as they're in need of goals. He was prolific there

[chekhov]

He really has played for some very prestigious clubs, hasn’t he?

Yup. And he’s traveled the world. I wonder if there are other footballers who are similarly well traveled? Does anyone know the record for the player with the most clubs, and who has played professionally in the most countries?

[4:20]

Not sure but John Burridge played for 29 clubs, mostly in the UK...

Here's another footballer, Sebastian Abreu, with many clubs and many different countries

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.guinne ... ies-508066

[Swizzlestick]

Lutz Pfannenstiel- only player to have played in six continents. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutz_Pfannenstiel

Favourite bit of his CV - getting a loan spell at Bradford Park Avenue while playing for Dunedin in....New Zealand!

[jdrobbo]

Good knowledge