Yeah, Hagi is borderline top ten to me, despite Romania's loss to Switzerland. However, this to me is not the same as having two players in the top twenty from a team that is not anything memorable.
Hmm, maybe not memorable for our generation but for ones before? But ofc, maybe I've bought too much into their performances on the other hand (and had to view highlights only for early games). I don't say I'm right and everyone else is wrong or anything but just put up a list of choices I think is as good as I can (even if some different choices would be just as good in effect) and then also include the descriptions for interest and videos for entertainment (including the Albert one I made so that I could include it).
Who knows if it was memorable back then, that team has not withstood the test of time, it does not belong to the legends as I have never heard them referred to as some paragon of greatness. Anyways, it is your list and you can include anyone you want, @BadaBing just posted his with Messi at #1 !
First I agree that many disregard Juste Fontaine's performance in WC58 ! he was not a flashy and scored a lot of tap ins goals, but so did Muller ... About Kopa, We discussed this ...a while back According to Gazetta della Sports, Kopa ot 6 assists/WC58 = Pele 6assists/WC70 = highest in WC history I knew last time you said 8, but I want to justify which 2 assists that people ignored for him? Thanks in advance ! ( I did not have all games of France 58, but only 1 vs Brazil) 1958 World Cup: Combined goal & assist table. 17: Fontaine (Fra) : 13 goals+4 assists = 9: Kopa (Fra) : 3+6 7: Pelé (Bra) : 6+1 7: Hamrin (Swe) : 4+3 6: Rahn (BRD) : 6+0 6: Vavá (Bra) : 5+1 6: Schäfer (BRD) : 2+4 5: McParland (Nir) : 5+0 5: Hovorka (Cze) : 2+3 5: Parodi (Par) : 2+3
I think that 8 figure was a mistake from myself and I stood corrected by PDG a few months ago . Kopa seems to have 6 assists indeed .
Hum... I don't think goalscoring stats are some kinds of irrelevant stats at all. After all, scoring goals is the essence of this game. As for Kopa's stat, at least it suggests how high his level was at that time and that he may have not been inferior to Didi in that WC. And we don't rank teams in this thread but individual performances. That is not exactly the same thing (I think) thus I can't see the issue with picking players from 'very good team' and not only from 'great' or 'legendary teams'. Anyway, France's defense was a real issue in that WC and that explains they lost vs Yugoslavia but the offensive department (not only Kopa and Fontaine but also Piantoni and Vincent) still is one of the most effective in the history of WC.
About Thuram, I was thinking he might fall into the 'single game' category, just to be clear (I was thinking about his game vs Croatia). About Zidane, I rate his WC98 game higher. Not only because he produced more but also because I think he had more gas and seemed to be more capable to break defenses by himself. I don't know what @Estel or others think about this.
I don't think that a pair of obscure performances that no one gives a crap about should be considered top twenty, particularly both of them together. Yeah, France scored a lot of goals in two matches against minnow teams (Paraguay and Northern Ireland), and six against West Germany in the glorified friendly third place match. Aside those matches, they scored two goals against each of Yugoslavia, Scotland and Brazil - not bad but nothing extraordinary especially for 1958 football. And soccer is not gridiron football with two different offensive and defensive teams, in particular Kopa who as a midfielder is responsible for his team's play. That France gave up five to Brazil and three to Yugoslavia shows that its midfield was overran besides any lack of quality of the defense. You are arguing the same as saying that Oscar and Hulk played excellent football but the defense let Brazil down at WC14 when in reality the whole team sucked (just some more than others). Ultimately, there are far more greater individual WC performances to merit a place in a top 20 than either Kopa and Fontaine.
Well, I agree to disagree but it's quite clear the issue was the backline. The defensive area was definitely a problem until the coach somewhat succeeded to fix that after the first two games vs Paraguay and Yugoslavia by moving Penverne to the CB position alongside Jonquet. The result was that Scotland only scored 1 goal and Ireland didn't score any. The defense also looked to work relatively well vs Brazil until Jonquet got injured. It's quite obvious France wouldn't have given up five to Brazil had they not been forced to play with 10 men after their defense leader and captain broke his leg. Kopa was hardly responsible for France's poor defense.
Likewise on the other side of the coin, France scored a bucket of goals against perpetual minnows Northern Ireland, a Paraguay that as a nation was just recovering from decimation and hardly had enough adult men for a professional league, and a third place match against West Germany, which is known even now to use non-competitive matches for preparation as opposed to results. Against the other three more respectable matches, France only scored two goals per...hardly the stuff of legends. There are just too many great and more relevant individual performances to include both Fontaine and Kopa at the very top.
Ah, ok yeah - I ended up thinking that about Zidane 98 over 06 vs Brazil too even though from memory I might have assumed vice versa. Thuram vs Croatia was very good of course. I only really put in Moore vs Germany as a defensive performance. I think he have the ball away less than Thuram from deep, but of course goals probably count more than assists and each did good defensive work in their own ways (I did see the Thuram video posted recently but maybe ought to check it again if I was to consider that game - but I saw a Cannavaro one from 2006 recently which was a good reminder of another top display by a defender). Bossis vs W.Germany (aside from missing the penalty) was a very very good one I think too btw.
agree Zidane at WC98 final was a monster in MF Zidane at WC06 was also very very good in MF but not a "threat" to win games in any sense So Zidane 98 final > Zidane 06 QF
rightly so ... especially for a playmaker like Kopa, Platini ...or Zico Pele Cruyff deep down, football is the game ending with a team scoring more than the otehr ... as winner
I've come up with a full squad (having revised my idea re: the thread title to Maradona 86, Cruyff 74, Pele 58, Eusebio 66, Garrincha 62 as per my posts above). I only included one player once, although Pele for 1970 and Beckenbauer for the same year (and according to France Football ratings four years later too even if I've said I'm not sure he showed his best attacking play in that tournament - not sure of other sources for that years WC ratings) would be in contention otherwise. So I picked Krol and Maldini for the years they played exclusively at left-back rather than for 1978 and 1994 respectively. I've plumped for only two goalies (in reality a squad has 3 surely) so went with Fillol over Dasaev's 1982 World Cup, so that I could include Cafu and Thuram both for 1998 (Thuram gives cover as CB in theory - I don't have the inclination to review their games but might have plumped for Cafu from memory but ratings and also posts on here say Thuram and I don't actually recall that I picked an XI at the end of that World Cup and which of those I'd have put in though I suspect Cafu rather than Thuram, Zanetti or anyone else - Cafu/Thuram also had another year that might be worth consideration in 2002 and 2006 respectively I think): Goalies first: Gordon Banks (1966) (All-Star Team member*) *Although, I noticed when watching the 3rd Place Play-Off that the English commentator suggested Yashin would be seen as the goalie of the tournament actually. Ubaldo Fillol (1978) (All-Star team member) (France Football's average rating - 4.29 out of 6 with best of 5/6 vs Poland and the Netherlands)
Full-backs: Carlos Alberto (1970) (All-Star team member) (France Footballs average rating - 4.5 out of 6 with best of 5/6 vs Romania, Peru and Italy) Cafu (1998) (Average rating of 6.30 from Italian newspapers - joint 38th player in the list) http://football-ratings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/average-ratings-world-cup-1998.html (France Footballs average rating - 3.83 out of 6 with best of 5/6 vs Morocco) Lilian Thuram (1998) (All-Star team member) (Average rating of 7.10 from Italian newspapers as in above link under Cafu - top rating in the list) (France Footballs average rating - 5 out of 6 which is the highest of any I checked! with best of 6/6 vs Croatia) (Bronze Ball) Ruud Krol (1974) (All-Star team member) (France Footballs average rating - 3.86 out of 6 with best of 5/6 vs Argentina) Paolo Maldini (1990) (All-Star team member) (France Footballs average rating - 3.43 with best of 4/6 vs Uruguay, Ireland and Argentina) (Average rating of 6.35 from Italian newspapers - joint 25th player in list) http://football-ratings.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/average-ratings-world-cup-1990.html
Liberos: Franco Baresi (1990) (All-star team member) (Average rating of 6.7 from Italian newspapers - joint 4th player in list - see link under Maldini) (France Footballs average rating - 3.71 with best of 4/6 vs Austria, USA, Uruguay, Argentina and England) Gaetano Scirea (1982) (France Footballs average rating - 4.14 with best of 5/6 vs West Germany)
Before I continue, and since the edit time has expired on the full/side-backs post: I remembered I was going to add Kicker's average score for players from 1998 onwards, so Thuram's is 1.91 (lowest being best with their scale) and he is the top rated player according to them too, and Cafu's average is 2.83 (joint 49th best for that 1998 World Cup): http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/wm/spiele/weltmeisterschaft/1998/topspieler-der-saison.html
^ good stuff. France Football ratings have always been good (until recently) in my opinion. France Foot ratings > L'Equipe no doubt . With a good scale: 0 (Mediocre, sent-off), 1 (bad), 2 (barely average), 3 (average), 4 (good), 5 (very good), 6 (exceptional). Simple and efficient. Must be a note on 10 now with eventually half a point and all. edit: 2006 is recent of course (↓). "Exceptional" remains particularly subjective, more than any of the other categories. Of course.
Centre-backs: Bobby Moore (1966) (All-Star team member) Fabio Cannavaro (2006) (All-Star squad member) (Silver Ball) (Average rating from Kicker* and Placar combined - 7.18 - top of the list) * Converted from Kicker scale in some way http://football-ratings.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/memory-lane-2006-world-cup.html (Average from Kicker alone using their normal scale - 2.21 - 2nd player in list) http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/wm/spiele/weltmeisterschaft/2006/topspieler-der-saison.html (France Footballs average rating - 4.57 with best of 6/6 vs Germany)
Yes, this site has them all for 1970-2006 and also for 2010 but with a 1-10 scale: http://www.everyfourthyear.com/ I can't link to individual pages with that I don't think anyway but that is the source of all my France Football average ratings (game by game ratings shown). I was thinking about a second squad and although he might not be in it (although would be for years 1970-2006 alone which is the period with ratings available) I was calculating Pierre Littbarski's too for 1982 and he is an example of a player with a 1/6 but in that case (every player was given that mark as a protest I think for W.Germany vs Austria) I would probably discount the rating if calculating an average. Also for a player who is given a 0 probably (like Zidane in 2006, although IIRC he might be given a grade when sent off in 1998) even though I can see the idea behind scoring a 0 in a way.
I was checking for sources for equivalents of golden/silver/bronze ball for before 1978/1982 and didn't find anything but might as well mention this book looks like it has slightly different all-star teams for 1970 and before as compared to Wikipedia (1978 and 1974 seem to be on a page that is not previewable): https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...onepage&q=golden ball giuseppe meazza&f=false
Interestingly that book seems to say Raymond Kopa was the 'Golden Ball' winner for 1958 too (maybe confusing it with his Ballon d'Or as European Player of the Year?) wheras this site for example says the 1-2-3 was Didi-Pele-Just Fontaine: http://www.worldcupbrazil.net/world-cup-history/world-cup-30s-60s/1958-sweden/ The awards were just journalist votes and nothing official though before 1982 or 1978 weren't they? I wouldn't be surprised if the book had the correct All-Star teams though (before 1994 they were not officially linked to FIFA either of course).
Top 6 1. Maradona WC86 Messi WC14 3. Kempes WC78 4. Jairzinho WC70 5. Robben WC14 Cruyff WC74 http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads/maradona-86-vs-messi-14.2008702/page-131#post-32094270
Well, I believe that the true story of it all is that FIFA stopped to make a "best team" after the World Cup 1938 since Piola was ommitted in the 11 and that they have been subjected to the the popular anger for that. It seems that a committee continued to elect a 11 afterwards but it was not published (kept secret, but that must be foundable somewhere still...I don't know...that is mysterious enough). Anyway there was no official 11 made by FIFA until...'98, I guess. Or it is '94? Or 90 maybe but here I'm really not sure (?). In any case the Golden ball for the best player exists only since 1982, that is for sure. Previously there was only the top scorer(s) and the best young player who were awarded (and still...there was no trophy...so even not in some way...best young player, every four years since '58 I guess). As for Kopa, yes it is the journalists. Most of the European publications had Kopa has the "best player" and I guess most of South American ones had Didi. What is sure is that L'Equipe had elected Kopa. And maybe the Swedish, some swedish journal (or the organizers of the tournament?) had Didi, I think I have already seen that somewhere. Didi won the tournament so maybe he got more votes who knows ("more votes", I mean more honorific title by some journalist)? For that, one would have to find every publications who has elected his best player and do the count. I'm not sure if there is an "official best 11", by FIFA for the tounaments of 1930 and 1934 that said. But '38 is official for sure. It is the last one they published before decades/ half a century. I think that the all-stars teams 1950-90s that we can find on the net or even in books are not linked to FIFA in any maneer, "officially" or "not officialy" but that it is taken from one journal in general when it is not the author of the book who imagine his own 11. "Random" choice of a journal so to speak. I had the time to copy the best 11 provided by Eurosport website at a time. I don't know where they come from. I can post it, but where please? In this thread or do someone knows another one who would be maybe better for that?