Dutch legend Johan Cruyff passes away aged 68. I would never forget his class, talent, technique and overall brilliance. IMO, perhaps one of top five best players ever. RIP Johan. Gone but will not be forgotten. 188 retweets277 likes Reply Retweet 188 Like 277 More
For those of you who missed this at the time, or for those of you who just want to time-warp back to this historic, opening day, 7.22.06 Arsenal v Ajax: 2nd Half w/ the old legends & tons of singing - Paddy gets a huge ovation as he comes out, along w/ a few others of course. But then when CRUYFF switches from manager to player at 71' he gets arguably the biggest cheer of all! p.s. Try to ignore the bizarre image-stabilization going on in these videos, especially when the players run out from the tunnel.
R.I.P. Johan. You will be missed. BTW, for those who may not know, Johan Cruyff also played in the original NASL, with the old Los Angeles Aztecs for a few years before that club folded in 1981 (low attendance at most home matches part of the problem). Indeed one of football's all-time greats along with The King (duh, we already know), George Best (He also played for the Aztecs and also for the original San Jose Earthquakes), David Beckham, and of course, Pele.
NO WAY Beckham is in that list. From what I can tell there is pretty general consensus that the top4, or as one BBC lady put it, the Mount Rushmore of football would be... Pele Maradona Cruyff Messi (unless he's found to be an alien) Others might try to sneak in Beckenbauer, Distefano, etc. But I think they seem to be just a small cut below. George Best, as truly gifted as he was in skill, is surprisingly not mentioned too often in this discussion. And Becks... fuggedaboutit! Of course it's all debatable, but those top4 seem to be it. And I'm having a BigSoccer deja vu moment. I'll have to see if I wrote this once before years ago. Edit: my apologies. I didn't see that you were talking about NASL/MLS player greats. Becks can stay in that list I guess.
I mentioned King Henry XIV, as he is/was one of football's all-time greats, the same would hold true for Zinadine Zidane, now he never played a single match here in America, yet he won a World Cup (along with Henry in 1998), but he would definitely get an honorable mention of being on that "Mount Rushmore of Football" as will as Thierry Henry. Franz Beckenbauer would be up there too, all those titles he won with Bayern Munich in the 70s, Diego Maradona was also a footballing icon, of the 1980s....... .......but Lionel Messi, yes, now I can see the thing of picking him, due to his goal-scoring prowess where he is a threat out there whenever he steps onto the pitch, watching him, along with his co-front-liners Luis Suarez and Neymar, is just a treat to watch, they kind of remind me of the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s under head coach Pat Riley, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Byron Scott, James Worthy, and Kurt Rambis, an extremely-entertaining NBA championship-winning team (they won 4 times under Pat Riley, 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1988) to watch, game-in-and-game-out, that is as close of an analogy to the Barca clubs of the past several years as I can describe it.