Football’s ultimate Star Wars XI - including Leeds United, Chelsea, and Newcastle players

A long time ago, in a beautiful game far, far away...
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May the Fourth Be With You; aside from a glimpse into what it might be like to watch Return of the Jedi with Mike Tyson, it’s also a phrase that has come to encapsulate the world’s adoration for everything to do with one of the most beloved movie franchises in history. Today, of course, is Star Wars Day - an excuse for wannabee Jedis across the galaxy to rejoice in the marvel of George Lucas’ endearingly unhinged cosmic soap opera.

Now, unfortunately for us, 3 Added Minutes is not a site dedicated to the Skywalker Saga and all of its surrounding canon. We are, ostensibly at least, a football publication. But we are also, if nothing else, opportunitic, and so, with that in mind, we have trawled the depths of the universe to come up a team of players whose names could quite easily slot in alongside the Lando Calrissians and Admiral Ackbars of this, well, star system. It’s better than proper work. Also, we’re sticking to the men’s game on this one, so no Hope Solo, before anybody says anything.

And so, without further ado, punch it, Chewie...

Karl Darlow (Hull City, on loan from Newcastle United)

A promising young Jedi trainee who loses his way and falls to the Dark Side. What ensues is a long, painful internal struggle between good and evil, which eventually ends with him renouncing the forces of wicked before falling off a dizzingly high walkway into a bubbling reactor core. There are no handrails in space.

Ki-Jana Hoever (Stoke City, on loan from Wolves)

A plucky rebel upstart, orphaned by the Republic and forced to live on his wits and whatever scrap metal he can salvage and sell for a few credits here and there. He is streetwise, smart-mouthed, and destined for an expendable role as a sidekick in one of the tepidly received cash grab spin-off films. His death, courtesy of a lightsaber to the abdomen, is upsetting, but not so upsetting that it ruins your day.

Malo Gusto (Lyon, on loan from Chelsea)

The best goddamn pod racer in the galaxy... apart from an irritating six-year-old with a bowl cut. Upon his defeat, Gusto stares sullenly at his snot-nosed vanquisher before subtly softening and garbling a bunch of nonsense in a made-up language that sounds uncannily like somebody trying to play a steel drum with a jackhammer. Below him, subtitles read: ‘You did good, kid’.

Marlon (Monza, on loan from Shakhtar Donetsk)

Look, I’ll level with you, I wanted somebody with a single name on this list, like Yoda. And then it got me thinking, imagine how much better the original Star Wars trilogy would be if Yoda had been called Marlon instead. Honestly, picture it;

BEN KENOBI: You will go to the Dagobah system.

LUKE: Dagobah system?

BEN: There you will learn from Marlon, the Jedi Master who instructed me.

And so on and so forth. Genuinely been chuckling away for about half an hour just thinking about it.

Baba Rahman (Reading, on loan from Chelsea)

A fearsome bounty hunter from the outer reaches of galaxy, but ultimately a nomadic enigma of which we actually know very little. We never see his face from behind his battle-scarred helmet, and we never hear him speak. Baba meets his end when he falls into bottomless pit that houses an inescapable fate worse than death; Chelsea’s loan system.

Jarko Wiss (Retired)

The sort of character that your average Star Wars casual on the street wouldn’t be able to name, but that your proper, dyed in the wool Wookieepedia contributor would swear blind is actually the fulcrum on which the entire saga hinges. Jarko Wiss is the fella who patented the mechanism in the printing press that widely distributed plans for the specific rapid freezing device that allows Carbonite to be transformed from its naturally occurring liquid form into a solid state capable of transporting safely transporting goods, thus allowing Boba Fett to capture Han Solo in the Cloud City and ensure his passage, unharmed, to Jabba’s Palace on fringes of the Northern Dune Sea in Mos Espa on Tatooine. Can’t believe you didn’t know that already.

Darko Gyabi (Leeds United)

Just a weird li’l guy who owns a casino/dive bar/pawnbroker/bed and breakfast/cosmic body shop in the middle of nowhere. He will threaten to dob you in for a previously unresolved discrepancy (blaster-related murder) in his fine establishment, but will see sense once you blackmail and/or bribe him. Ultimately, he will steal the hubcaps off your space ship, but that’s okay, because you don’t really need fancy looking wheels for interplanetary flight anyways.

Mile Jedinak (Retired)

Not the big baddie, but maybe like, the big baddie’s right-hand man. Y’know, the one who gets his windpipe crushed from thirty paces after telling his boss that matters completely out of his control have gone awry due to the hubristic evil of those above him in the pay structure. Welcome to the crippling reality of late stage capitalism, Mile.

He never wanted any of this. All he wanted was to be a humble pencil pusher in a neat uniform - somebody his family could be proud of. Somebody who could squirrel away enough of a space pension for him and his wife to buy an intergalactic Winnebago and travel across the stars seeing comedically large novelty items on various small, backroad planets. The Andromeda’s biggest ball of twine? Count him in!

But now look at him - choked out on a Quadanium steel floor and complicit in the target destruction of at least 16 life-hosting satellite bodies. When Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil, this is what she meant.

Ritsu Doan (SC Freiburg)

A Jedi master, but one of the cool, mysterious ones who we only ever meet in passing. Legends tell of his intrepid conquests against the Empire, and we all clamour for a Disney+ origin/spin-off series that will absolutely underwhelm to a massive extent upon arrival. His lightsaber blade is baby pink.

Teemu Pukki (Norwich City)

An unassuming nerf herder (we’re reclaiming the slur) who is thrust unexpectedly into the path of action and adventure after a chance encounter with a young orphan who has an uncanny, and wholly untapped, ability to move pebbles... with their mind. Alongside his best mate, a Wookie named Grant Hanley, he sets off on a perilous voyage across the galaxy, and finds true love with a fugitive princess in the process. It’s all pretty standard, tbh.

Divock Origi (AC Milan)

The final boss in one of the post-reboot canon-meddlers; a proper Sith lord with a billowing cloak and double-ended lightsaber that he swings about (very irresponsibly) like a big kayak paddle. Again, meets his maker when he topples off a stupidly high platform into some molten stew or other. Do none of these intergalactic planet-killers pay heed to health and safety regulations?