i always promise myself not to post in theese kind of threads, as i'm not intersted in rankings and i'm not so excited by the individual aspect of a team sport, as football.......
but for some reason, it looks like i always break this promise.... :lol:
anyway that's just something i'd like to point out.
it's a common mistake to rate maradona's napoli as an average team.
but i know that team very well, and i can guarrantee to u (as anybody in italy, i guess) that that napoli was a great team.
they didn't have a deep roster, their backups weren't on the same level of the starting 11, but their starting formation was awesome.
Giordano, Bagni, Careca, Di napoli, Alemao, Ferrara, Zola, Carnevale......
that was an amazing team, quality, creativity, solidity.
Careca and Giordano were one of the world's best attacks.... and if they would still be playing today... they would still be one of the world best attacks.
those days milan was even stronger than nowadays. that milan was a team full of quality.... but actualy the whole serie a quality level was huuuge those days. u couldn't win 2 scudetti in 3 years (and a 2nd place and a uefa cup) without a top class team. Maradona wouldn't have been enough to win serie a those days.
of course, compared to maradona his teamates didn't look like superstars.... but afterall also platini, zidane, falcao, van basten, rivera, mazzola made look their teammates "average"...... but their teammates were cabrini, del piero, ancelotti, gullit, maldini senior, facchetti..... not exactly average players.
what i mean to say is that some players, like diego, van basten, cruyff, falcao, zico, best, pele, rivera, di stefano, puskas, baggio, zidane, baresi, muller, beckembauer and a few others, were so great that their teamates always looked on a different level... even if they were great players too.
talking about the thread subject we could argue for months about who would really deserve to be named "the best ever" without finding a sharable and agreeable name. most of the players u mentioned played in different eras, their football was different. i mean try to look at pele and maradona. looking at their phisique, it almost seems like they played a different sport. it's impossible to compare them.
moreover many of theese great players played in different roles. so how can we compare them?
how can we compare baresi to zidane, for example? or beckembauer to maradona?
it's impossible to compare a cb to a midfielder who played in the same years, so how can we pretend to compare a cb to a midfielder who played 30 years before than him?
as u can see the title of the thread is "the greatest player ever IMHO" i'd say that "IMHO" it's pretty important, and it was a smart move by vanzandt to put it in the thread title. because we can just say who was the best according to our personal likes, to our limited football knowledge. Just to make an example i honestly can't compare maradona to best or to pelè. because i don't know pele neither best enough to express a deep judjement on them. To truly rate a player u have to see him playing..... seeing some highlights on espn classic just isn't enough. it's not enough to see one match, neither 10, or 20; it's not enough to see that player playing for a whole season. to truly rate a player u have to see him playing for years, 40, 50, 60 matches. now, i saw maradona playing 60 entire matches (probably a lot more :mrgreen
, i saw van basten, platini, zidane, baresi, nesta, maldini, zico, falcao, giannini, gullit, conti, playing 60 matches..... but i can't say the same about best, pelè, beckembauer and many others.
that's why i won't ever say who was the best. coz i can't really know who was the best..... and anyway i don't even think there is "the best". what i can reasonably say is that in tha last 100 years the world witnessed some players, who just were on another level, who deserved to be mentioned in an hypothetical "hall of fame".
