Everton have had many great defenders over the years and Sylvain Distin was certainly a player who made an impression at Goodison Park.
The Frenchman joined the club in 2009, with the club paying Portsmouth a fee of around £5 million.
He would go on to play six seasons for the Toffees. In his final one in 2014/15, he played surprisingly little.
Everton were under the guidance of Roberto Martinez at the time, with the Spaniard having made a solid impression in his first season at the club.
Martinez led Everton to a fifth-placed finish in the Premier League, and there was excitement about building on that for 2014/15.
But it was a much less successful term, with Everton struggling and ultimately finishing. Martinez was sacked with one game remaining in the Premier League with the club in 12th place. He had guided the Toffees to the semi-finals of both the FA and League Cups, but fans had demanded his removal.
One man who will have been glad to see the back of Martinez was Distin, who claimed a few years ago that Martinez was actually the only man in football he ever lost respect for.
Sylvain Distin totally lost respect for Roberto Martinez at Everton
Distin – who had impressed Eric Dier with the shape he was in – made just 20 appearances for Everton in the 2014/15 season.
Having been fairly involved in the first few months of the campaign, Distin’s minutes then dried up drastically following Everton’s defeat to Swansea City in the EFL Cup on September 23.
Distin made an appearance on Toffee TV: Everton Fan Channel on YouTube a few years ago and spoke about what happened in his final season at Goodison.
Distin didn’t play a full game in Everton’s pre-season ahead of 2014/15, but he was thrown into Everton’s starting XI straight away for the new season.
He claimed that that was an initial sign he knew ‘there’s something wrong there’ with Martinez.
Distin claimed that Martinez then didn’t want to play him, and he never really got an answer as to why. He then went to play a few games with the U21s to keep fit.
Distin said: “I must have played three of four games, then I’ve been told that I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. Now you clearly try to make it personal.
“I’m not the type of player to go and knock on the door and say ‘What’s going on?’ that’s just not me.
“I know he tried to play it as if (John) Stones took my place. You can speak to Stonesy, Duffy, any of the players who came to play, every time I told them ‘I’m too old, I should not be playing’. The only thing you have to do is keep me out. But I’m not going to make it easy for you.”
“Did I understand it? No, even up until the last game of the season where you feel like, we didn’t speak for three months, but I’m training every day and everything.
“You’re going to have a minimum of respect, but even there he just, I think it was the day before a game, he was saying out loud there’s no reason for me to play. He’s not here for a send-off. And I just didn’t understand. That showed his personality. In that last game (vs Tottenham Hotspur), something happened because he clearly didn’t want me to play, but I ended up being on the bench. Somebody above might have said to him ‘Listen, you have to do a minimum because it’s disrespectful’.
“But even to that point, he tried to make it difficult for me just asking me to come to his office just before the game. It’s disappointing.”
“I’ve had a lot of managers. I had arguments with David Moyes but I have too much respect for him. And we clashed a lot of times. I speak my mind, I always say what I feel. There is no one in football that I lost respect for, apart from him. Players, staff, fans, that’s the only person that I lost respect for. Because he tried to make things personal.
“From my point of view, he looked like he was trying to break me.”
In an interview during that 2014/15 season, Distin claimed that he had been told ‘nothing’ about the plans for him (via Daily Mail).
Distin was so underrated
Distin’s six years at Everton were really good, and it was actually the longest time he’d spent at any club in his career.
He struck up a brilliant partnership with Phil Jagielka, and the contributions of those two in 2013/14 helped Everton to seal a Europa League finish.
During his prime, he was truly fearsome and even in his early to mid-thirties, Distin was a tough opponent for Premier League forwards.
To this day, Distin still holds the record for most appearances in the Premier League by a foreign outfielder, which really does emphasise how good he was for so long.
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