Ivorian and Chelsea legend, Didier Drogba; ex Belgium and Manchester City star, Vincent Kompany; his Argentine teammate at City, Sergio Aguero, as well as Paul Scholes, have been inducted into the English Premier League (EPL) Hall of Fame.
Also on the list of inductees are Ian Wright and Peter Schmeichel.
The six football icons join Wayne Rooney and Patrick Vieira, who were announced last month as the “Class of 2022” inductees.
The new batch of induction was announced in a post on the league’s Twitter handle on Thursday.
They were selected by the public, through an online vote, and the Premier League Awards panel.
The EPL Hall of Fame was launched in 2021 as “the highest individual honour awarded to players by the Premier League.”
Thierry Henry and Alan Shearer were the inaugural inductees before David Beckham, Dennis Bergkamp, Eric Cantona, Steven Gerrard, Roy Keane, and Frank Lampard completed the “Class of 2021.”
Aguero left Manchester City in 2021 as the highest-scoring foreigner in the EPL history, with 184 goals in 275 league appearances over a 10-year period in which he won five league titles. He was, however, forced to retire from football earlier this season due to a heart condition.
Scholes was a member of the famous Manchester United “Class of ’92,” winning the EPL 11 times for the club before retiring in 2013, having bagged 107 goals in 499 league appearances.
Drogba won the EPL four times at Chelsea, claiming the league’s golden boot twice as he amassed 104 goals in 254 appearances for the Blues.
Kompany won the EPL four times with Manchester City, where he was the team’s captain for close to a decade.
Wright helped Arsenal to win the Premier League for the first time in 1997/98 as he also went on to become the Gunners’ all-time leading scorer — although Henry had beaten the record.
Schmeichel becomes the first goalkeeper to be inducted into the EPL Hall of Fame. He kept 128 clean sheets in 310 Premier League appearances and remains the only goalkeeper to have won the Premier League Player of the Year for the 1995/96 campaign.