Poll: Best Soccer Player of All-Time

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by this thread, I was wondering which soccer player(s) the opinion of the teeming millions was/were the best of all-time.

I personally think Maradona was the best player of all time and his skill was responsible for Argentina winning the 1986 World Cup. The disgraceful ‘Hand of God’ incident and several other scandals does temd to obscure his talen tin some peoples eyes, nevertheless he was supremely gifted. Also George Best is up there with very few having the abilty to manipulate the ball at his feet the way he did.

2

Maradona is my number one. Pele second - the guy had astonishing speed, control and agility.

3

Georgie’s only shortcoming - in terms of “subjective greatness” is that he never played in a super duper World Cup winning squad, and his career was shortened by his notorious love of the booze. He was like a rock star destined to burn out - such prodigious talent recklessly wasted.

For mine, Maradona suffered much the same fate as Pele did - that is, he was violently marked out of the game at times and it really was ugly to watch. In particular I refer to the 1982 World Cup match against Germany.

It’s a very hard discussion is this one - not the least of reasons being that the greats of the game prior to the 1950’s were filmed so infrequently. And as a result, they don’t figure so highly in our estimations…

Modern training methods, combined with full time professionalism results in greater on field appearance time, without doubt… which also increases the perception of the superiority of the modern player.

In sheer World Cup winners medals though, statistically Pele wins. But it’s so subjective. A great thread at any rate. I look forward to reading the future posts.

4

Pele.

As brilliant as Maradona was, his career doesn’t have the length and weight Pele’s does. Pele was scoring goals for TWENTY YEARS; I can’t remember the exact numbers but I believe he scored about twice as many goals, and far more goals per game, and he’s got more World Cups and World Cup play goals. He was the best player for the best national team there ever was. He was the sport’s greatest star, by far.

5
  1. Pele
  2. Cruyff
  3. Beckenbauer
  4. Maradonna
  5. Platini

I did not include players I did not see myself (on TV), like Di Stefano and Garrincha.

6

Here comes the pedant in me…

Just what constitutes “best”?

Is it the player who has achieved the most (what I would call greatest)?

Is it the player who has most influence in the games they played?

Is it the one who had the most outstanding and exceptional skills?

I’ll address each one of these in turn:

The greatest player of all time is undoubtably Pele. His career spanned the better part of three decades. He was a part of three World Cup winning teams. He won every conceivable trophy in Brazilian and South American football. He scored over 1000 goals in his career. He was declared a national treasure and a civil war was even postponed to allow him to play a match in Africa. No single player’s achievements stack up to this guy. He is the Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan or Jack Nicklaus of football.

Regarding influence in games, I feel that the position played makes a massive difference and that, for the most part, the most important single player on a team is usually the goalkeeper. So how do you compare Lev Yashin with Eusebio? Or Peter Schmeichel with Franco Baresi? Or, for that matter, how do you even compare strikers with wingers or midfield anchormen with full backs? Answering this question is just way too hard.

Skill is usually attributed to offensive players so it pretty much automatically rules out goalkeepers and defensive players. The most skilled players I have ever seen with the ball (bear in my that Pele and Di Stefano et al were before my time) were Diego Maradona, Dejan Savicevic and Romario. All these guys could play with the ball like it was attached to a string and their feet were like hands. However, I could not really say that Romario was a better player overall than Rinat Dasaev or that Savicevic was a better player than Kenny Dalglish.

So what I will do, just to assure you that I am not a completely wishy-washy pedant, is give you my all-time XI from about 1980 to 2003 (my football viewing career) in 433 formation.

GK: Peter Schmeichel
LB: Paolo Maldini
CB: Franco Baresi
CB: Alan Hansen
RB: Lilian Thuram
AM: Zinedine Zidane
AM: Diego Maradona
DM: Frank Rijkaard
ST: Marco Van Basten
ST: Kenny Dalglish
ST: Ronaldo

I am aware that the only players in that 11 who might be considered the greatest (achievement/talent/influence) of all time are Maldini, Baresi and Maradona. The other guys are just the ones I think were best.

I am also aware that there is no width in my midfield or forward line but I couldn’t leave any of the guys out. I did include a forward (Dalglish) who could play deep and an anchorman (Rijkaard) so it does have some consideration towards making it a team that could actually work on the field.

7

Let’s not forget though that most of Pele’s games and goals were in the various Brazilian leagues (most Brazilian clubs are members of mutiple national and regional leagues which can mean 60 or 70 games a season) where the emphasis is on attack and there is no solid defensive tradition. Just below a goal every other game average is good but it’s not earth-shattering, there are many players with better goal averages than Pele. His acheivemnts in the World Cup is what makes him stand out, but as a said before I still think Maradona and George Best were more gifted than him. For sheer longevity Stanley Matthews has everyone beat playing 1st class football from when he was a teenager until he was 50 (also IIRC he won both the first European Player of the Year and the first World Player of the Year some 20 years later).

8

Actua;lly I’ve just checked Pele’s goal average it was just under a goal every game which is v.good but it’s still not the best, I think Dixie Dean’s was higher and another Scottish player is the only player to average more than one a game.

9

Dean averaged 0.942 goals per game for Everton (473 goals in 502 matches) versus Pelé’s career average of 0.939 (1281 goals in 1363 matches). Celtic legend Jimmy McGrory averaged 1.005 (410 goals in 408 matches). Naturally I’m biased, having been raised on stories from older relatives who saw Dean scoring his 60 league goals in the 1927-28 season (he actually scored 82 in all competitions that season), but there’s no doubt in my mind that he was the all time greatest goals scorer.

As several people have said, it’s impossible to single out one player as the best of all time because we have to take account of the differences between attackers and defenders, and of the changing tactics, fitness and coaching methods and quality of opposition.

Several truly great players have already been nominated in this thread, but although my own favourite all rounder would be Pelé it’s worth remembering that he won those World Cups playing in great teams. That 1970 team might even have won the World Cup even if the other ten players had to play by themselves. But in 1986 Maradona won the World Cup, virtually single-handed, in a very mediocre Argentinian team, and he got an even worse one to the Final in 1990.

10

For me it would have to be Maradona. If he would have played for our local pub team in 1986 we would have won the world cup.

Pele is a very, very close second though.

Honorable mentions to Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Platini, Bobby Moore and Maldini

11

Robin Friday.

12

TwistofFate, being a Royals supporter I’ve got the biography (The Greatest Player You Never Saw), also his family still live in Reading, one of my friends went to school with his daughter.

Robin Friday was very gifted but to say he’s the best player of all time is stretching it.