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Marian Pahars (born 5 August 1976 in Riga) is a
Latvian football (soccer)|football player. He is a
striker for Southampton F.C.|Southampton in the
English Football League Championship and the
Latvia national football team|Latvian national
team. His Latvian language|Latvian given name is
Marians; however, most football media have
internationalized his name as Marian since he
began playing in England.

He started his professional career with Skonto FC
in his hometown of Riga, and was transferred to
Southampton in March 1999, becoming the first
Latvian to play in English Premier League. Pahars
soon made an impact for the Saints, most notably
scoring a pair of goals in the club's last match
of the season against Everton F.C.|Everton,
securing their status in the Premiership for the
following season.

Over the next several years, he was a solid
goal-scoring threat for the Saints. However, he
underwent a hernia operation in the summer of
2002, struggled to regain his fitness, and then
severely injured an ankle in November 2002. Pahars
had two operations on the ankle, and did not
return to action for about a year. Late in the
2003-04 season, he began to show some flashes of
his former form, and became part of Latvia's 2004
European Football Championship|Euro 2004 campaign.

However Pahars continued to struggle with
injuries, missed most of the subsequent two
campaigns and is still on the injured list at the
start of the 2005/2006 season.