Mixed in withthe cheats, chancers and chairmen that make up this list, there's a big dollop of pure, unadulterated envy. Yep, while every entry in our countdown of 50 most hated people in football have drawn major dislike for a variety of reasons, some of them are also loved in equal measure.This isn’t a list of people we here at FFT personally hate - although some of the people here are definitelyoff our Christmas card list- but rather who stir up opprobrium in the game.So what we’re saying is: don’t blame us if yourfavourite icon whose face you have tattooed on your thigh is here (although it would be a pretty strange person to have Mike Dean inked on their leg). We’re just trying to hold up a mirror to the football world.That said, if we’ve put anyone here who shouldn’t be present - or if we’ve missed out someone widely reviled - do let us know (nicely) @FourFourTwo. For now, let’s bring on the hateby starting with positions 50-41. Come back throughout the week as we finish the countdown...50. Sergio RamosOpen a dictionary at the entry for ‘pantomime villain’, and the definition might simply be a picture of Sergio Ramos, perhaps waving an imaginary yellow card at a browbeaten referee. Ramos holds the record for the joint-most sendings off of any La Liga playerever, but he’s a strange kind of hard man in that he is impossible to take seriously.Rather than a chilling defensive gatekeeper, the Real Madrid defender’s persona is more defined by a kind of larger-than-life recklessness;a shameless supervillain. You could say that Ramos – good looking, cartoonishly ludicrous, lacking any self-awareness and amassing trophies on behalf of a super-rich juggernaut – is the defining footballer of the modern age.Words:Alex Hess49.Alan PardewHis public personality straddles the line between smug and sleazy – it’s probably encapsulated by the nauseating touchline dance when Crystal Palace equalised in the 2016 FA Cup Final, which did achieve the impressive feat of getting neutrals to back Manchester United.There’s a thin veneer of respectability, but like a dry-lipped Bruce Banner, Pardew also has a nasty streak that occasionally bursts out - from calling Manuel Pellegrini a "f***ng old c***"to head-butting an opposing player on the touchline.Despite a middling managerial career, he carries a sense of superiority that’s best evidenced by what West Ham fans call the ‘king story’.Words:Amit Kawala48. Robbie SavageA media career which mimics who he was as a player. Robbie Savage, the combative, provocative player became ‘Sav’, the opinion-on-absolutely-everything pundit.To give Savage his dues, he was really just an early exponent of something which many of his contemporaries have recently caught up with - i.e. he who shouts loudest and most antagonistically, wins. We’re looking at you, Chris Sutton.He’s also been very successful and until quite recently, straddled nearly half a dozen radio and television channels, appearingin all sorts of different formats. The irritating talking head who proves the old maxim: it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.Words:Seb Stafford-Bloor47. Tony PulisUntil recently, it had been largely opposition fans that resented Tony Pulis's signature – and wholly unapologetic – sit-and-stifle blueprint. Although it’s increasingly nowfans of the clubs he manages too. Just as sure as Wales' foremost excitement-extinguisher will always have his admirers among those who prize mid-table security, he will always face seething opprobrium from the more aesthetically minded among his spectatorship.Pulis has been scorned by many a snookered manager in his time but none more frequently or indignantly than Arsene Wenger, who has variously labelled Pulis's team "cowards", "horrendous" and practitioners of"more rugby than football".Also allegedly head-butted his own striker while wearing nothing but a scowl once – an image to give us all nightmares.Words: Alex Hess46. PepePortugal’s master of the dark arts is – to English eyes at least – everything that’s wrong with football. He has all the attributes to be a legendary defender – pace, bravery, strength and intelligence – and, after a decade at Real Madrid, the trophy cabinet to match. But it’s the manner in which he’s used his talents that attracts the ire.Like his long-time defensive partner Ramos, Pepe a is dirty, dastardly and downright infuriating player – the kind who will pull the shirt off your back when he’s defending a corner, and then collapse like a house of cards if you give him the same treatment at the other end.Words: Amit Kawala45. Alan GreenPoor Alan Green. He’s disliked for being everything that a football commentator is supposed to be.Today’s equivalent is a slave to the sound bite and, more often than not, gratingly optimistic at every turn. In contrast, Green is gloriously dour; every game he covered - and continues to cover - presents an opportunity for a good ol’ moan.To a particular type of unstable, fundamentalist fanhe was prone to moments of bias, but his real crime was likely that his presence - his voice, his tone, his demeanour - made any game sound like an attritional battle in the mud. The marmite of British commentary.Words: Seb Stafford-Bloor44. Stan KroenkeA man whose bank balance soars thanks to a team that meekly treads water is never going to be worshipped by that club's fans -and so it has proved with the American sports tycoon, for whom the tide of public opinion appears to have been fiercely turning over recent months.“We don’t want his sort,” was the response of Arsenal's former chairman Peter Hill-Wood when Kroenke first showed up on the scene. That was in 2007, when Kroenke began amassing shares for£7,500.Adecade on, with the American having invested precisely zero of his own money in a team that had long been drifting towards irrelevance, he was turning down offers of £32,000 per share. Good work if you can get it.Words:Alex Hess43. Ben ThatcherOnce is an accident. Twice is coincidence. But unfortunately for a player whose elbowing controversies numbered at least three during a red-and-yellow-flecked 18-year career, thrice is very much a trend.Thatcher gained notoriety in 2006 when his ostensible attempt to dispossess Pedro Mendes resulted in his forearm bludgeoning the face of his opponent, who was rushed to hospital having suffered a pitchside seizure. The level of brutality was so severe that Greater Manchester police were compelled to launch an investigation – just as Lancashire police had looked into a similar ‘challenge’ during a reserve game that February.Six years earlier, in his final year at Wimbledon, Thatcher had dished out the same treatment to Sunderland’s Nicky Summerbee – a moment that persuaded the onlooking Kevin Keegan against selecting him, as planned, for his upcoming England squad. Thatcher would go on to represent Wales, despite having played for England at U21 level (four appearances, one red card).Words:Alex Hess42. Neil WarnockTo catalogue his fall-outs would take more than the allottedspace here, but suffice to say the aptly anagrammed managerial veteran has his fair share of enemies. The sheer range of this roll call – from the widely loathed (El Hadji Diouf, Stephen Hunt) to the inoffensive (Gareth Southgate) to the downright bizarre (Sean Bean) – is testament to Warnock's status as a man who could not so much start a fight in a phonebox as inspire a Royal Rumble in one...before complaining about the outcome in the press.His position as a protagonist in the fabled Battle of Bramall Lane (three red cards, two 22-man melees, one abandoned game) makes for an apt top spot on Colin Wanker’s greatest hits compilation.Words:Alex Hess41. Sergio BusquetsThe iron fist inside the velvet glove. Busquets is a fabulous player, that’s not in dispute - he might even be underrated. Buthe lacks the sheen of many of his team-mates and the perception of him as the physicality behind Barcelona’s grace, hopelessly reductive though it is, makes has made him the hateable face of his club.Few dislikeMessi and only a philistine would object to Iniesta, so what are you left with? Who provided the outlet for the world’s seething jealousy? The big, awkward looking guy in the middle, of course, with his fondness for theatrics and dalliances with the dark arts.Words: Seb Stafford-BloorFourFourTwo's most hated people in football: 40 to No.1 will be here this weekNow read...Ranked! The 30 most hated ever teams in British football10 of football's most spectacular (and often awful) debutsNo, seriously: what the heck is expected goals (xG)?New features you'd love on FourFourTwo.com
