This article was first published on my old bornagainbloke.com blog on 12 May 2012, at the end of the 2012/2013 Premier League season - hence the mention of footballers no longer playing in the English top flight...

Prayers are likely to be offered up at football grounds up and down England tomorrow, especially in Manchester as both City and United vie for the title. At the other end of the end of the Premier League table fans of QPR, Villa and Bolton will be praying their teams survive the drop.

Of course logically you could argue that opposing fans will cancel out each others’ prayers, and in a logical sense that is true. But it is not wrong for Christians to pray for a football match, just as it is not wrong for Christians to pray for catching a bus or unblocking a sink. As St. Paul teaches: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31)

The same can be said for footballers that pray before matches – I imagine they pray not just for success in the match, but to give glory to God in their performance.

Below are my Top 5 English Premier League Christian Footballers. This ranking is not based on their footballing skills, but on the power and impact of their witness to their faith.

5. Didier Drogba

With his constant play-acting Drogba is hardly a paragon of virtue on the football pitch, but he does witness to his faith while playing, both by crossing himself every game and praising God when he scores. And unlike many footballers, he actually puts his money to good use, establishing the Didier Drogba Foundation, supporting African children.

4. Anton Ferdinand

Early in the season, Rio’s younger brother Anton “came out” as a Christian in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. In the interview he tells of his aim to start up a prayer group at his new club QPR, having left an evidently strong community of Christian players behind at his previous club Sunderland.

3. Javier Hernandez

Nicknamed Chicharito or “little pea”, Manchester United’s Mexican forward Hernandez is a wonderful witness, offering himself completely in prayer on the pitch before every kick-off.

2. Steven Pienaar

The South African Spurs/Everton player often has a t-shirt underneath his strip proclaiming “God is Great”, which he reveals whenever he scores – most famously in the picture above following his equaliser for Everton at Old Trafford this season. He is also very open about his faith on his twitter account @therealstevenpi.

1. Fabrice Muamba

If I had told you a year ago that the Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, would run a front page imploring the entire nation to pray, you would probably have told me either that I had gone mad or that the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch must have had a damascene experience.

But that is exactly what happened in March following the collapse of Bolton midfielder and devout Christian Fabrice Muamba at White Hart Lane during an FA cup tie with Spurs. Led by Muamba’s fiancée and friends, the twitter hashtag #pray4muamba spread like wildfire, trending across the globe in the hours after his collapse, during which his heart stopped beating for 78 minutes. This led the Sun to run a front page urging the nation to “Pray for Muamba”. Muamba is, thank God, now on the road to recovery – a recovery that some of the doctors that treated him described as miraculous – and in an interview with the Sun last month, he described himself as “walking proof of the power of prayer”.

What a witness. What a Lord.

Amen.