Daily Mail Top 50 players ever

Discussion in 'Players & Legends' started by PDG1978, Jun 14, 2009.

  1. JamesBH11

    JamesBH11 Member+

    Sep 17, 2004
    In general viewpoint, I agree with you ...

    However to compare Didi to Van Hanegem is a bit not fair (for your country man) a "DIFFERENT LEVEL" I would say.

    But a few points added here:
    - Didi was not just great at WC58 but he was also very good at WC54 (2goals/3games)
    - He was a monster in Copa America 1957 (8goals/6games)
    - At club level, he was the best ... and no doubt he was also the best or among the BEST for Brazil in his time (55-63).
    - Didi and Zizinho were among the so called "under rated" legends for not many football fans knew and got the clear record stats of them!

    =========================================================

    Here is a brief on how Didi was like when he plays

    Didi, the unflappable genius

    [​IMG]

    Like a "true leader with talents and calmness":

    “I was already in position out on the left wing, ready for kick-off, and I saw Didi walking slowly with the ball in his arms. I ran over to him, shouting in desperation, 'Come on Didi, we're losing!' He just said 'Calm down lad. We're still a better team than they are. Don't worry, we´ll turn this game around soon enough,'” fellow Seleção legend Mario Zagallo told FIFA.com. “And once we heard that, everybody suddenly calmed down. We equalised five minutes later and the rest is history. That's what Didi was like: he made everything seem easy.”

    This is HOW DIDI plays (in Style)

    Nelson Rodrigues, the writer who, for many, best encapsulated Brazilian football in the 1950s and ´60s. Rodrigues compared Didi´s elegance on the pitch to that of an “Ethiopian prince”, which in time would become his unique nickname.
    Didi treats the ball lovingly. At his feet, it seems to become a rare and sensitive orchid, which must be looked after with affection and pleasure,” was one of Rodrigues´ particularly descriptive portrayals of the midfielder´s class in possession. And though such eloquence may seem a little over the top nowadays, there are few stars whose playing style lends itself as much to poetic license as Didi´s did.




    About his miserable time at Real: (Di Stefano (jealously) had made him playing like a DM behind him = Total misused of a genius )

    The Spanish fans loved players who put in tackles and went to ground, and I never used to tackle anybody,” recalled Didi, in a 1987 interview with Brazilian magazine Placar, of his frustrating time alongside the likes of Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas.

    My shirt and socks would still be spotless by the end of a match and they couldn´t get their heads round it. I used to have to grab a handful of mud and smear it across my shirt. Why should I have to do that, when I could attack and put our strikers through on goal? The fans used to get so angry,” added Didi, who returned to Botafogo in 1960 and won a second world title with Brazil at Chile 1962.


    A true "Complete player" and Founder of a so called "fallen leaf Freekick Trademark":

    Didi was the man who taught me how to score from free-kicks and how to shoot,” Cubillas told FIFA.com, on the coach who handed him his senior Peru debut. “It´s also because of him that, despite being right-footed, I worked hard in training until I could use both feet equally well.”
    As much of an idol as Cubillas was, however, it is the words of another even more legendary figure that best sum up Didi´s place in the history of the beautiful game. “I´m nothing compared to Didi. I'll never be anywhere near as good as he is,” said none other than Pele, in an interview given during Sweden 1958. “He´s my idol, he's the guy I look up to. The very first picture cards I bought were of him.” Need we say more?
     
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  2. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
    Some of your stats are not correct, but I want to say that Didi was a late blossomer. Around 1954 he was as 'traditional' inside-forward still not the same world class player, and ranked below the other Brazilian forwards of that time (also at that actual tournament).
     
  3. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord




    :thumbsup:

    As addition: Didi also lost his place shortly after the 1954WC - which sort of demarcates the two eras.
     
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  4. Krokko

    Krokko Member

    Nov 16, 2011
    Club:
    AIK Solna
    Nat'l Team:
    Sweden
    Are you sure a Torbjörn Nilsson (just to take one example) deserves to be as forgotten as he is? When IFK Göteborg played in Stockholm i always went to see them, regardless of weather, opponent and importance of the match. Not because I like IFK - I actually hate them! - but because Nilsson was an incredibly elegant and creative player. He scored goals of Van Basten class, but since Swedish TV in the 70s/80s only paid attention to ice hockey, there's very little footage to prove that. But this doesn't make him a less impressive player (at least not in my opinion).

    Besides that, he was also the 1980s EC top scorer, ahead of all your Rummenigges, Maradonas, Linekers and Platinis.

    Imagine for awhile Nilsson was English or Italian. Do you reckon he would still never be mentioned by anyone?

    (Nilsson is just an example of the phenomenon, but since I'm Swedish it's a handy one).
     
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  5. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
    For what's worth, writer Glanville indeed called Van Hanegem "the Dutch Didi" in a 1969, 1973, 1974 and 1999 piece (maybe even more). Though one with some steel added.
    According to him he was the most consistent Dutch player in the 1974 final, curiously. And after Cruijff the second most important player of the team.
     
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  6. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
    Can I ask why you don't like IFK?

    I agree that Nilsson was a very good player but not succeeding abroad has a lot to do with it.

    Can you show that Nilsson is the 1980s EC topscorer?

    Also a reminder of the request to post the Ballon d'Or comments of aforementioned players.
     
  7. Krokko

    Krokko Member

    Nov 16, 2011
    Club:
    AIK Solna
    Nat'l Team:
    Sweden
    #1357 Krokko, Nov 22, 2013
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2013
    Ah, well, I'm an AIK fan so the rivalry with IFK is incorporated in me... Just like a Feyenoord supporter is not likely to appreciate Ajax.And besides, there's somethimg really scary about the Göteborg dialect... :eek:

    Torbjörn Nilsson did have int'l success: he was the most important player in IFK's UEFA Cup winning team of 1982 and in 1986 he litterally destroyed Barcelona in the first EC semifinal (3-0). In the 2nd leg, Barcelona were allowed to foul him a lot, and the referee also disallowed two IFK goals on dubious grounds.

    Nilsson refused to play in the NT for many years. In 1984 we were in a mess after losing 0-1 to Portugal in Sthlm, so he accepted to play a few matches to "save" us. In Lisbon he made an incredible solo goal and got a penalty (we won 3-1). Vs West Germany he made assist to both Swedish goals as we recovered from an early 0-2 disadvantage.

    1980s EC topscorers: http://football-ratings.blogspot.it/2013/03/memory-lane-ec-goalscorers-1980-88.html


    Let's start with

    CRUYFF
    1967: Great opportunist.
    1968: Patriot, will certainly become famous. - Director of Ajax.
    1969: Far better than he showed in the EC final. - Took Ajax to the EC final. - Incredibly popular scheemer and marksman. - No one is faster and a better dribbler, maybe except Kindvall. - Singular dominance on the pitch. - Virtuoso.
    1970: Does whatever occurs to him, one of the greatest talents ever in Europe. - Better than ever, more of a team player. - Engineer & terminator.
     
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  8. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
    Maybe stupid question but why was he only once Swedish player of the year? (Ibrahimovic has eight trophies, somehow, though he has arguably less competition). And only once Swedish league topscorer? (I know that only a dozen - 13 to be precise - managed to win it two or more times because of the competitive nature of the league).

    Thanks for clarifying his NT career (saw that wikipedia also mentions his conflicts with the managers); know him mostly from his games in Europe with Goteborg during their glory days indeed.
     
  9. RoyOfTheRovers

    Jul 24, 2009
    Club:
    Newcastle United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England



    Greaves also didn't pick up more PFA PotY "gongs" because the award wasn't given until the end of the '73-'74 season. Which was almost seventeen years after Greaves made his debut w/Chelsea in '57...
     
  10. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
    Sorry mister Roy, I was not fully exhaustive with my comment.

    When the PFA award was installed they immediately granted a 'lifetime' award to Bobby Charlton at a special ceremony in 1974, to make up for that. It was back then called "special award for services to football".
    Since then many received it but Greaves never did. How?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFA_Merit_Award
    [see also links below]

    Same for the FWA
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FWA_Tribute_Award

    Remarkably, he never received such FWA tribute award either.

    Strange right?
     
  11. Krokko

    Krokko Member

    Nov 16, 2011
    Club:
    AIK Solna
    Nat'l Team:
    Sweden
    #1361 Krokko, Nov 22, 2013
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2013
    Sweden is a very NT-centric nation and that surely penalized him. As for his goal tally: IFK Göteborg was a very collective team and nobody had an "official" star status in the team, which meant that Torbjörn played as much for his team mates ad they played for him. He got quite a few penalties, but never took them himself (that was Stig Fredriksson's job: he scored 5 of them only in the 1981/82 UEFA Cup). The tougher the opposition the likelier Torbjörn was to score however. In the UEFA Cup winning team of '82, he scored 9 goals and probably assisted as many. In the 1985-86 EC he scored 7 goals, of which two vs Barcelona despite a very harsh treatment indeed.



    Torbjörn was a/is a communist and really couldn't care less about money and fame. Liedholm wanted him at Roma, but when he finally decided to try a 2nd pro carreer (after a PSV failure) it was at Kaiserslautern... After the 3-0 match vs Barca, Spaniesh press called him "el verdugo cocinero" (the executioner cook), since he worked in a restaurant kitchen. Asked if he would accept a 10 milion kronor bid from Barcelona, he typically answered: "Nah... frying meatballs is more fun".
     
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  12. schwuppe

    schwuppe Member+

    Sep 17, 2009
    Club:
    FC Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih
    No, that's not what I meant.
    I agree that he is underrated and should be more talked about indeed, I just don't think that he belongs among the best 50 players ever.
     
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  13. Krokko

    Krokko Member

    Nov 16, 2011
    Club:
    AIK Solna
    Nat'l Team:
    Sweden
    I agree he may not be top 50, but I've been going through more than 70 lists of players - some of them containing 100 players - without seeing his name one single time (and somewhere between 200 and 250 players have been mentioned at leat once). The same goes for Albert, Praest and Wilkes, but that's more understandable since they're more distant in time.
     
  14. comme

    comme Moderator
    Staff Member

    Feb 21, 2003
    But he'd be hard pushed to claim a place in an all time top 500, so the fact nobody has included him is hardly surprising.

    Not to be overly harsh, and I'm not claiming my lists are in any way definitive, but I didn't include him in my list of top 100 strikers or top 100 forwards and not one person objected.

    Some of the names that have made it into these lists are very strange really.
     
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  15. Krokko

    Krokko Member

    Nov 16, 2011
    Club:
    AIK Solna
    Nat'l Team:
    Sweden
    So a guy who scores more EC goals than Platini, Maradona, Rummenigge, Lineker, Völler and Hugo Sánchez, who mesmerizes all fans (even those who hate IFK) and is considered Sweden's 3rd, 4th or 5th best player of all time (competing with people like Nordahl, Ibrahimovic, Liedholm, Gren, Hamrin etc) is not to be considered a top 100 or 200 player? I fail to see why.


    Here are two EC top scorer lists of the mid 80s (where he had serious knee problems btw):

    1984/85
    7: Torbjörn Nilsson (IFK Göteborg), Michel Platini (Juventus)
    5: Paolo Rossi (Juventus), Ian Rush & John Wark (Liverpool)

    1985/86
    7: Torbjörn Nilsson (IFK Göteborg)
    5: Lajos Détári (Budapest Honvéd), Ismo Lius (Kuusysi Lahti), Victor Piţurcă (Steaua Bucharest), Aldo Serena (Juventus)
     
  16. comme

    comme Moderator
    Staff Member

    Feb 21, 2003
    In 1984-5 he scored 5 goals in a 17-0 aggregate win over a team from Luxembourg.

    He's roughly 40th in the list of top scores in Europe for clubs

    http://www.rsssf.com/players/players-in-ec.html

    He had two spells outside Sweden, a nation with a coefficient between 15-20 for most of the time he was there, and neither of them were more than a moderate success.

    http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method1/crank1980.html

    That's enough to put him potentially in the top 100?
     
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  17. schwuppe

    schwuppe Member+

    Sep 17, 2009
    Club:
    FC Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih
    #1367 schwuppe, Nov 22, 2013
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2013
    This is just some statistic trivia accomplishment and not really their whole career.

    Miroslav Klose WC, Pippo Inzaghi EC.

    If you ask people in Austria who's the best player they will tell you Krankl or Prohaska which in my opinion means squat. Why? Because the average fan knows little about history and those are the two players that are talked about in the media.

    Public polls about 'who's the best alltime?'. No thanks.

    You need to elaborate how this helps your case...?

    Point is this accomplishment (or let's say some feat of similar difficulty) isn't a rarity.

    Probably even less, because people couldn't play the 'imagine if he was from a big country!' -card.

    What is the difference between Nilsson and Nordahl, Liedholm, Elkjaer, Laudrup or Zlatan?
    My answer would be later actually managed to back & live up to how they are rated.
     
  18. schwuppe

    schwuppe Member+

    Sep 17, 2009
    Club:
    FC Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih
    When I played that B-Draft game I did research on Soviet players from the 50s-70s. Earlier Netto, Voronin, Ivanov and Shesternyov where highlighted as exceptional players IIRC.

    They certainly had the results to back their quality up.

    58 QF
    60 Win
    62 QF
    64 Final
    66 SF
    68 SF
    70 QF
    72 Final
     
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  19. JamesBH11

    JamesBH11 Member+

    Sep 17, 2004
    Well spot on ...

    Sometimes the number of goals is just overrated if we do not go deeper in STATS: goals/game, then how many games scored/total games and how many winner goals

    Example:
    - Player A scored 10goals in UCL but he got 3 hat tricks in some meaning less win like 5-0 or 7-1 ... and his contribution in just 4 games total

    - Player B in other hand scored only 7gaols but he might score 7goals/5 or 6games total to win for team and contribute more over all ...

    At first look people would be like WOW player A was great ???
     
  20. JamesBH11

    JamesBH11 Member+

    Sep 17, 2004
    Well like I said your knowledge of Brazil football is just opposite to your great one about Holland Football.

    What's about "inside forward"??? Was not a play maker supposed to be an INSIDE FW in traditional 2 3 5 or WM? Should you know that there is NO midfielder in those formation, until the revilution of 4 2 4 and 4 3 3 began from late 50's to early 60's?

    While I agree that 54 was not yet Didi's best form and best years, but he was surely a WORLD CLASS player at time.

    Like it or not ... let's refer to Comme's blog about that WC54 team:

    A Brief History of Tactics - Brazil and The Flat Back Four

    Brazil and the Flat Back Four

    At around the time that Hungary were making their move towards playing with a withdrawn centre-forward Brazil were also in the process of tweaking their formation. The small team of Vila Nova had also adopted a similar system in the early 1950s, and Flamengo won three Carioca championships between 1953 and 1955.

    For the national team though, and the rest of the world, the first time they saw the new Brazil was in 1954. In the World Cup of that year Didi, Brazil’s inside right, began to drop deep to join in the midfield, but his influence was overshadowed by the changes of Hungary who swept Brazil aside in the infamous Battle of Berne.

    ....


    And from Guardian.UK

    By then, he was an experienced international, having played for Brazil in the ill-starred 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, when his country was knocked out by Hungary in the quarter-finals, in the notoriously violent Battle of Berne. Didi, however, was not one of those who lost his head.

    How did he perfect those extraordinary free kicks? "Above all," he wrote, "a lot of practice, and constant practice. For instance, when I joined Botafogo [also of Rio] from Fluminense, in my first period with the club, the Botafogo coach did not care for my long practicing with free kicks, and, for a time, the skill was lost to me. The press said, 'Such a pity, Didi has forgotten his famous kick.' All that happened was that I was not getting the constant practice, and this experience taught me how vital this practice was."

    Technically adroit and a superb passer of the ball, Didi fitted admirably into the novel 4-2-4 system practised by Brazil during the 1958 World Cup, playing in Sweden alongside Dino, and then the more robustly-tackling Zito - though Didi himself was notable for intercepting balls in midfield.
     
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  21. Krokko

    Krokko Member

    Nov 16, 2011
    Club:
    AIK Solna
    Nat'l Team:
    Sweden
    #1371 Krokko, Nov 23, 2013
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2013
    Well, you are talking about a player you've seen playing ... how many times? I've seen him live apprx 15 times plus half a dozen times on TV.

    And that is exactly the problem with all time best tables. If it is extremely difficult to make my point about a player who quit 27 years ago - how can I describe a player in a way that makes you understand his class? - imagine the difficulty if I wanted to claim - for example - that Henry "Garvis" Carlsson ("The best player I've ever coached", quote Helenio Herrera) or Karl Aage Praest (when Platini was compared to him by Italian media in the 80s, it was a great honour - to the Frenchman!) should be top 100? Virtually impossible.

    But does this make them less accomplished footballers? Of course not.


    About Torbjörn Nilsson again: he helped an amateur side from Scandinavia to in the UEFA Cup and took them to the EC semifinal vs Barcelona, where they were beaten more by the referee than by Terry Venables' men. Do you understand the absolute greatness in that achievement?

    When Johan Cruyff was asked what was the best thing that had happened to football in the 1980s, he didn't say France's Euro team in 1984 or Denmark's Dynamite team, neither Lobanovsky's Dinamo Kiev: he actually said the 1982 IFK team was the most positive phenomenon of the decade, and that it gave him hopes about the future of the game. Well, Torbjörn Nilsson was to that team what Cruyff himself had been to the Ajax andd Holland NT in the 70s.
     
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  22. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
    Sorry James, but Didi was in 1954 still the traditional inside-forward. Heck, even knowledgeable Brazilian posters over here or at xtratime (who know something about history) say that. And that he lost his place for a while after 1954 sort of demarcates two eras. Only after that he started to play at a deeper role.
     
  23. Krokko

    Krokko Member

    Nov 16, 2011
    Club:
    AIK Solna
    Nat'l Team:
    Sweden
    #1373 Krokko, Nov 23, 2013
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2013
    To play against minnows was no privilege to IFK Göteborg: there were teams from Malta, Luxemburg, Iceland, Finland, Cyprus etc that you could steamroll (which also happened, regularly). What was remarkable about Nilsson's scoring were not those goals vs Avenir Beggen but the other 28 EC goals: he scored against English, German, Italian and Spanish teams (three of them: Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla).

    And he was the 1980s EC top scorer, despite ending his carreer halfways through the decade (summer 1986). Is that impressive or not?

    What should remembered is also how competeley unprotected Scandinavian teams were against clubs from big nations back then: HSV were hammering the IFK players in the first UEFA Cup final in 1982 without sanctions, and so were Barca in the 1986 EC semifinal. This was a constant in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and everybody knew it. When Milan beat Malmö FF in the 1968/69 EC, Frenchman Mâchin was absolutely outrageous, disallowing MFF goals etc. Milan player - I stress: Milan player - Kurt Hamrin said after the match: "Did you really believe that they would let MFF pass against an Italian team? That doesn't even exist." In 1975 the referee Tzwetan Petrov Stanev helped Bayern pass against MFF: he gave a penalty when Kapellmann was fouled outside the box and allowed Conny Torstensson's goal, clearly offside.

    This means that Scandinavian teams had to be much better than their opponents - just better would never be enough - to qualify.

    Still IFK managed to play 14 consecutive matches without defeat - 10 4 0, 31 scored, 10 conceded - in European Cups 1980-82. And opponents included the HSV side that in 1983 won the EC (4-0 on agg), Kaiserslautern (that had beaten Real Madrid 5-0 at Betzenberg in the previous round), Valencia (that had 14 consecutive home victories) etc.
     
  24. JamesBH11

    JamesBH11 Member+

    Sep 17, 2004
    Since you kept on saying Zico was a FW your knowledge of Brazil football is like ZERO

    It was like some one calling Cruijff a striker = know nothing of Holland football. Even indeed Cruiff did start as a Center FW ( but Zico NEVER start as a FW ever)

    Lastly. I do not care xtra time forum like they really know what they talk about ?...
    do you really know what formation and where EXACT Didi was with Brazil 54 team? can you draw and tell me Didi was a FW??

    Oh just like you claimed Zico was a FW .... no doubt ...

    but if you want to know, I will help ...
     
  25. PuckVanHeel

    PuckVanHeel Member+

    Oct 4, 2011
    Club:
    Feyenoord
    The difference is ofc that Nilsson was actually a good footballer, instead of 'only' a finisher.

    Didn't you say before that you rather prefer ratings from the country itself rather than foreigners?

    Well, not many have a similar ratio in the European Cup, so that is a bit rare. I also noticed that all the players with more goals played more games too (except Puskas).

    Your lists had also Patrick Kluivert not among the top 100 forwards or strikers. Says it all. And no one objected either because, you know, some nations are more fancied as others.
     

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