Ian Wright

Ian Edward Wright was born on 3 November 1963 in Woolwich, London, to Jamaican parents, and spent most of his childhood in Brockley. He was not signed by a professional club as a teenager, and instead played amateur and non-league football, including for Greenwich Borough, feeling disillusioned about his chances of becoming a professional.

That changed when Crystal Palace signed him in 1985, when he was already in his early twenties. He quickly made his mark, scoring nine goals in his first season and going on to be one of the club's most prolific strikers, with 118 goals in all competitions, before leaving for Arsenal.

In September 1991 Arsenal paid a club-record £2.5 million for him. He scored on his debut and a hat-trick on his league debut against Southampton, and was the club's top scorer in his first season with 26 goals. On 13 September 1997 he broke Cliff Bastin's long-standing record to become Arsenal's all-time leading scorer, a record that Thierry Henry later surpassed in 2005. He finished with 185 goals in 288 appearances and won the Premier League title with Arsenal in 1997–98.

Known for his speed, agility, finishing and aggression, Wright played 581 league games and scored 287 goals for seven clubs in England and Scotland, among them West Ham, Nottingham Forest, Celtic and Burnley. He won 33 caps for England between 1991 and 1998, scoring nine goals, and was appointed MBE in 2000 and later OBE.

After retiring he became one of the most popular pundits and presenters in British television, appearing as a regular on the BBC's Match of the Day from 2002 until 2024, and was inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame. He is the adoptive father of the former footballer Shaun Wright-Phillips, himself a Premier League champion.