Colin John Clarke (born 30 October 1962) is a Northern Irish retired footballer who played as a forward, and a former head coach.

He played for seven English clubs between 1981 and 1993 before retiring through a knee injury, and scored 13 goals in 38 matches for the Northern Ireland national football team from 1986 to 1993.

A member of their squad at the 1986 FIFA World Cup, he was joint with Billy Gillespie as Northern Ireland's top scorer of all before their record was surpassed by David Healy.

[citation needed] Along with fellow striker John Clayton, he formed one of the deadliest strike-forces in the Football League by scoring 22 goals that season, but the 1984–85 campaign ended in disappointment as Tranmere just missed out on promotion.

During his time at Fratton Park he was in the side that reached the FA Cup semi-finals in 1992, only being eliminated by Liverpool after a replay and penalties, and narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier League a year later.

He made his international debut in a pre-Mexico World Cup warm-up match against France in February 1986 and scored his first Northern Ireland goal against Morocco on his third appearance.

He scored his then record-breaking thirteenth Northern Ireland goal against Albania in September 1992 and played his final international match two months later against Denmark.

On 22 May 2007, Puerto Rico Islanders appointed Clarke to replace Toribio Rojas as head coach midway through the team's worst season since their creation.

Late in 2007 he also took the Islanders to the CFU Club Championship semi-finals, the Caribbean qualifiers for the 2008 CONCACAF Champions Cup, where they lost 1–0 to Joe Public F.C.

Despite a bad start to the 2008 season, Clarke managed to lead the team into the CONCACAF Champions League by winning a two-game series on 1:0 aggregate against fellow 2007 CFU Club Championship semi-finalist San Juan Jabloteh for the tournament's Caribbean third place spot.