$re = '/(?:\s*\b[a-z]+){0,}\h*$/m';
$str = 'John Doe waves
Bakary N\'Diaye says hello
Iván Aguilar goes well
Cisteró shot
Dan I Soylu shots
Mike van der Hoorn with a cross
M.J. Williams takes a shot
Donny van de Beek left foot
Mike van der Hoorn hello
Artak G. Grigoryan with through ball
Trent Alexander-Arnold after a break ';
$subst = "";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php