At the start of the ESC These footballers have already tried their hand as musicians

The ESC is just around the corner. And to mark the start of Europe's biggest music competition, blue Sport shows you footballers who have already tried their hand at being musicians. Some more, some less successful. And there's even a referee.

The Eurovision Song Contest begins in Vienna on Tuesday. Musicians from all European countries will compete for the title of the best song on the continent. The Champions League of the music industry, so to speak.

In fact, some footballers have already tried their hand at being musicians and swapped the green pitch for the stage. A selection.

"The Kaiser" is one of the best German footballers in history. He also tried his luck on the microphone and released several hit songs. His best-known song: "Nobody can separate good friends".

Yes, our national team also sang. But rather by force. In the 1990s, when the national anthem was only sung along to a limited extent, the association had an idea. It organized vocal training with the singer Sina. However, the players around Chapuisat, Wicky and Sutter were rather uncomfortable with the idea.

Unforgotten: Before the 2010 World Cup, record national team goalscorer Alex Frei rapped the Swiss national anthem. Frei presented himself in gangster style with a fur jacket and thick gold chain in the music video for "Zeig Gsicht" with the rapper Bandit. "I wanted to be a bit self-deprecating for once. Singing and dancing are definitely not my strengths, I know that now," said Frei himself at the time, laughing about his foray into show business.

One former national team star who was more serious about his foray into the world of music was Josip Drmic. The striker released three songs between 2019 and 2022. He rapped with German rap star Eko Fresh and the "Croatian Kim Kardashian" Olivera Matijević, among others.

The Dutch record goalscorer launched his rap career off the pitch. And his songs were well received: "No love" from 2018 was clicked 20 million times on YouTube.

Music seems to be a thing for Dutch footballers. Legend Ruud Gullit sang reggae songs under the name "Re-Seaudi-Gullit" and also played guitar. He even landed a minor hit with the song "Not The Dancing Kind", which made it into the top 5 of the singles charts in Holland.

Fulham pro Alex Iwobi recently released an entire hip-hop album ("More To Life") under the pseudonym "17". The Nigerian international with the shirt number 17 has over 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

The songs of "Noano" are also streamed millions of times. That's what Dutch international Noa Lang calls himself when he shows off his singing skills.

It's not just footballers who have musical talent. In Switzerland, we even have a top referee who likes to take to the stage. Super League referee Urs Schnyder regularly rocks the stage with his band "Preamp Disaster".

A referee as a rock starHow top referee Urs Schnyder goes off on stage