Africans deserve a champion. Ever since South American youth has been taken to Europe, the South American game has lost some of it’s “spice”. Africa still has it and there are some teams that are truly packed with world-class talent. Otherwise, I feel Japan or South Korea would be really interesting.
Pelé
Maradona
Messi
Platini
Up for debate on the 5th one, many great choices to pick from. There are players that literally bossed the field and literally carried their teams and whole nations on their shoulders. Zidane is a personal favorite, but don’t know if he’s an all time top 5. Baggio carried Italy just to have the first penalty miss of his whole career and die standing. Messi made people love Barcelona, but Ronaldinho made people love football. Zico should be in the conversation too.
Small side note… you can clearly see in the comments who started watching football before social media and the internet and who watched football after that. Not a criticism to the younger crowd (I’m not even THAAAAAT old as someone in my 30s), just a small thing I noted while reading comments.
basically asking for the best #10s (at least classic ones, but not necessarily)… Well most comments already mentioned some of my personal favorites so I’ll just give a shout-out to Guti and James Rodríguez
How long are we going to let UEFA/FIFA get away with this?
City is a well-oiled machine. Simple as. They basically hired all the crew that made Barca great from the late 00s and they spent every damn cent in a very efficient way. City is insane as it’s the only team in history to have 22 world class players in their squad. Even the most legendary teams like the 70s-80s Liverpool, SAF’s Man U reign, Both AC Milan dream teams or Messi’s Barca had 15 world class players at most. Now, this isn’t to knock on their success as it is extremely hard to motivate 22 stars every season in a league where they steamroll everyone. Pep is a good coach, the sporting and business departments are well-oiled machines second to none in their spending bracket. State of the art facilities, scouting methods, negotiators and a seemingly endless bag of cash. Players also have insane bonuses on their contracts and once they’re set are hardly seen as disposable unless they defy the boss. They’ve also created a fantastic legacy since 2010 and honestly most players can only upgrade to Real Madrid if anything, Barca is a nice destination to live in (Manchester is a shithole unless you’re a college student in comparison to other European cities). With Barca being in the state they are, they don’t have many places to “upgrade” either. I recon players like Grealish could be absolute stars and protagonists elsewhere, but there’s no denying they’re making history.
Europeans will never like the international break because they’re more than likely in one of two extremes… they’re either a top footballing NT that absolutely trashes the likes of a country like Luxembourg or Cyprus OR they’re on the opposing end and always get trashed by said teams.
For South Americans there’s no such thing as a friendly match. It’s always balls to the wall with everyone giving their 100%. It’s always Colombia vs Chile, Brasil vs Argentina, Uruguay vs Ecuador, etc. It’s always a good game, even if dirty.
Most people outside of Brasil and Argentina don’t have much hope of their local club winning the Libertadores (our Champions League), so everyone just defaults to supporting their NT.
As a Premier League fan, I hate it, but at the same time I value it in very niche occasions. As a Spurs fan, I’ve never wanted an international break as much as I do now… the squad needs time to recover a few players and also time to reorganize everything for the upcoming games. International breaks also make you value diversity in a squad… the Asia cup might affect certain teams, the AFCON affects almost all teams, and so on.
Pirlo was not only a leader in the second coming if AC Milan as a super club, but he was also a leader in the Italy team that won 2006. Xavi, while already seen as talented by many players, was not nearly as a focal point to both Spain and Barca yet. Xavi post 2008 got all the credit as a leader and the brain behind the Spain that beat everything and the Barcelona that won everything.
Peak Ozil was on a different level to the rest of the sport. Xabi and Pirlo were up there too. James Rodríguez and Juanfer Quintero in particular had a ridiculous through ball. Messi I’m not even including in the conversation because he’s above everyone in that (and many other) department.
He’s not making fun of Messi, he’s making fun of AS and Roncero…
Ayo why the Colombia slander bro, what did they do to you lol