Hilarious story of Kolo Toure’s Arsenal trial when he tackled Arsene Wenger, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp to win contract

There's no football to look forward to right now and with Prime Minister Boris Johnson urging everyone to avoid unnecessary social contact, there is likely to be more darker days ahead. Therefore, it’s vital we still have a good laugh.

Here at marvelbet369.com, we’ve delved into the archives to pick out some of our favourite funny stories from the world of sport, and we're bringing you one hilarious tale every day.

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And one man who has a few to tell is Ray Parlour.

Here's the Arsenal legend's classic story about Kolo Toure’s incredible trial at the north London club back in 2002...

“Kolo Toure. What a fantastic player he was," the Romford Pele said. "Absolutely brilliant when he first came in. He was one of those sort of guys always on edge and would chase everything. You could tell by the way he played.

“He came into training one day, what he used to do for trialists is set up games. Usually if it was a centre forward he would put Martin Keown on him as he knew he would try and kick him and whatever and if he could handle that he might be a decent player.

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“This one day they had Kolo Toure, Martin Keown in Kolo Toure’s first training session. Against them they had Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp. I was playing on the right hand side and Arsene Wenger used to sit there, it was more for forwards really, and we used to do pattern play. If I would come inside then Henry would go outside and vice versa with Pires on the left hand side.

“I rolled the ball into Thierry Henry and Kolo Toure from nowhere has smashed him from behind. Two-footed tackle. Terrible tackle. Seriously, could have been a red card in a normal game. Our best player is rolling around.

“Arsene Wenger says ‘Kolo, what are you doing? Don’t tackle, don’t tackle.’ He just wants him to stand there. ‘Oh, sorry, sorry’.

“Next minute ball goes into Dennis Bergkamp, they’ve swapped now. Kolo Toure does exactly the same and two-foots Dennis Bergkamp and we are thinking ‘this is unbelievable. How can we win the league if our two best players has been taken out by the trialist. He must be working for someone else’.

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“Arsene Wenger says ‘right no more tackling’.

“Next ball comes in and Kolo Toure makes a great tackle, reads it and the ball is flipped up into the air. Arsene Wenger used to stand right in the middle of the midfield and forwards and he’d try and look at the movement, so the ball has gone up in the air and Kolo Toure has his eye on the ball - he’s chasing the ball - and where did it land? Right at Arsene Wenger’s foot and he’s two-footed Arsene Wenger. Proper tackle.

“All you heard was ‘ahhhh’. The lads are like ‘this is unbelievable. He’s took out Bergkamp, Henry and Wenger on his trial.

“Wenger has had to limp off. He’s gone back to the medical room. Kolo Toure is like ‘oh no’ and nearly crying. He can’t believe it. It’s his big day at Arsenal and he’s took out two of our best players and the manager.

“That afternoon, I remember going into the medical room to see Gary Lewin about something and Arsene Wenger is sitting there with a big ice pack on his ankle and I felt sorry for Kolo Toure. I said ‘boss, I don’t think he meant to kick you like that’.

More from the archive:

Roy Keane's hilarious story about trying to sign Matt Taylor at Sunderland and being rejected by text message

“He went ‘what? Look at my ankle’. And he had a big lump on his ankle. ‘Well he didn’t mean it boss’.

“He said ‘I know he didn’t mean it, I like his desire. We’ll sign him tomorrow’ and that was it.

“We signed him for £150,000 because he liked his desire. He could get that out of him and change the way he played just by his desire kicking them two players and he ended up being an amazing player for Arsenal.”