France Football their all-time list (August 1984)

PuckVanHeel · Mar 23, 2017

In addition to the posts above about cohorts and posts like this in the 'technique' thread;

PuckVanHeel said: ↑

Yes, seen in that way:

1915 - 1919: 3 players
1920 - 1924: 9 players
1925 - 1929: 20 players
1930 - 1934: 9 players
1935 - 1939: 7 players
1940 - 1944: 14 players
1945 - 1949: 5 players
1950 - 1954: 2 players
1955 - 1959: 4 players

Especially 1940 - 1944 is the odd one out (from a biological perspective) since we know that war and famine are not conducive to children development and growth. Next to that many babies died of course. This is also true for athletically gifted teenagers and adolescents (born ~ 1928 - 1933) who were sent to war.

Read this to see what I mean:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944–45#Legacy

From a talent pool and practitioners perspective (I'll not make cheap jokes about everyone, every potential late blossomer, being active instead of sitting on the couch...) 1940 - 1944 wouldn't be at the forefront necessarily.

The 'best' year to be born is 1925 (6 players; 1929 has five players), the best month October.
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comme said: ↑

So can we look at some similar factors in football as to why the 50s/60s are often seen in the same way? Naturally many of these are inter-related.

1. Creation of international club football - Both the European Cup and the Copa Libertadores provided an opportunity for teams to test themselves against each other. Without these sorts of competition it was extremely difficult to assess the relative standards of different leagues, players and competitions.

2. Growth of TV - The 1954 World Cup was the first to be televised and this was something that started to make foreign footballers household names. Until then there would have been almost no coverage of foreign football domestically except for

3. Development of plane travel - Foreign trips were now far more accessible and this fed in strongly to the development of the international game.

4. Expansion of the written press on football - Maybe not the case so much abroad but France Football (1946), World Soccer (1960), Soccer Star, Charles Buchan's Football monthly all came out and increased the focus on the game internationally.

5. Surge in foreigners playing abroad. Before the war there had been the Oriundi in Italy but the post-war era saw a huge expansion of foreigners playing in Italy and Spain.

All these things allowed the likes of Di Stefano, Puskas, Pele, Eusebio etc to establish their greatness globally (or at least continentally) in a way that prior generations just hadn't been able to. That greatness once established meant that these were established as legends for future generations.

Then we can also see a gradual decline in goalscoring (for instance at the World Cup):

1950 4 GPG, 1954 5.38 GPG, 1958 3.6 GPG, 1962 2.78 GPG, 1966 2.78 GPG, 1970 2.97GPG, 1974 2.55 GPG, 1978 2.68 GPG
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I've been doing some little research for myself and it might be that year of birth is of greater relevance than possibly thought. Without cherry picking, some years (or group of years) are truly more exceptional in terms of popular culture than other years. Sometimes, in case of a worldwide babyboom, it is not fully counterintuitive but in other cases it requires better thinking.

When limiting ourselves to (popular) culture;

The year 1940 gave us Pelé, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Al Pacino, Jack Nicklaus. Among some other top names in their respective field. Other notable players of 1940 are mostly British: John Giles, Jimmy Greaves, Denis Law, Ermindo Onega, Billy McNeill. Who do I forget?

The year 1960 gave us Diego Maradona, Bono, Ayrton Senna, Jean Michel Basquiat. In terms of football and depth 1960 also gave us Zenga, Baresi, Brehme, Careca, Lineker...

Of course it depends a bit on which popular culture fields you're including and such thing as 'greatest pop artist' or 'biggest band in the world' is subjective (most tend to rate Pacino slightly lower than his contemporary De Niro, but he unquestionably embodied some iconic roles and iconic scenes where the name of the fictional character can be mentioned without the film) but some years - or group of years - are clearly more stacked than others imho. Obviously more clearly so when looking at the very top end of fame and reputation.