Really? This is how you want to try and judge the top 50 of all time? Why would you need to break it down into segments? Certain time periods have a higher number of quality players than other. When you combine his Man U days and take his last year at Madrid and put it together you will see why he is such a great player. I dont understand how people can debate this when they have not watched him play until MLS or just assume he is overrated because there buddy said he was. I honestly believe its an image issue. People have this imagine of him being over rated and especially because he didnt set MLS on fire.
It was just a rough estimate, but I think its a good place to start. I already said why I think its a good idea to break this into segments: If we don't, people will tend to overrate active players because that is what's most fresh in their minds (or they didn't even follow soccer before the mid-1990s). I saw him in his Man U days, but here are players from the last 15 years that I would rate higher: Henry Zidane Ronaldo Rivaldo Totti Lampard Xavi CRonaldo Del Piero Kaka Figo Maldini Roberto Carlos Gabriel Batistuta Buffon Casillas Nedved Gerrard Ollie Kahn Michael Ballack That's 20 off the top of my head, and I was nice enough to exclude Messi, Eto'o, Giggs, Cafu and Essien. Plus I'm sure I missed a couple of obvious ones. I'm not saying I disagree with most of what you're saying. I just think people tend to under-estimate how great a player needs to be to get in that top 50. Becks needs to be better than at least half those players I listed to even be considered for top 50 all-time.
i just posted this in another thread so sorry to repeat the same joke... are you having a laugh? is he having a laugh? Anyone who thinks that Becks is top 50 ever than PLEASE make a list and post it. I think we would love to see who you leave off the list to put Becks on there. Laudrup? Baggio? Baresi? Cantona? You would need to do a list of 250+ before you get to Becks, and I don't even dislike the guy he is just not the league with top 50 or even top 100 players.
Matthaus was a complete bomb in MLS and most if not all of the "haters" in this thread would put him in the top 50.
I'd say the other way, you make a list. You'd put Cantona before Beckham for example? The comparisions quite easy as they both had their best years at the same club only a few years apart. I'm nostalgic for the Prmeiership of the mid-nineties, for me it was very entertaining, but seriously the Premiership of Beckham was a better league and Man Utd when Beckham was their best player a better team.
Honestly, I think Beckham would only just make the top 50 English-born players of all time. I can think of dozens of players who, when in their prime, were better than him: Bobby Moore Bobby Charlton Geoff Hurst Stanley Matthews Dixie Dean Jackie Milburn Nat Lofthouse Gordon Banks Peter Shilton Bryan Robson Ray Wilkins Chris Waddle Tom Finney Paul Gascoigne Trevor Francis John Barnes Jimmy Greaves Ray Clemence Gary Lineker Duncan Edwards Kevin Keegan Glenn Hoddle Emlyn Hughes Beckham would maybe, *maybe*, scrape into the top 30.
I came up with 34. (Not in any particular order): Pele Diego Maradona Franz Beckenbauer Ferenc Puskas Paolo Rossi Socrates Zico Alfredo di Stefano George Best Michel Platini Dino Zoff Mario Kempes Ruud Gullit Marco van Basten Johan Cruyff Ronaldo Ronaldinho Cristiano Ronaldo Kaka Eusebio Luis Figo Zinedine Zidane Karlheinz Rummenigge Bobby Moore Peter Schmiechel Eric Cantona Gordon Banks Bobby Charlton Garrincha Gerd Muller Hugo Sanchez Carlos Valderrama Johan Neeskens
Still though.... the only time Beckham played in the best league in the world was during his first couple years at Madrid. You know... when his predictable style of play was proven ineffective. Once La Liga weakened (in 2007) Beckham was finally able to look good in that league.
He wasn't even in the top 3 midfielders at his own club, Manchester United, during his peak. He's not even close to the top 50 of all time.
Do you think the Man Utd of Cantona'sd error was better? Seriously? Do you actually remember the Premiership when he played? I would certainly rate Shearer and Matt Le Tissier above him as forwards at that time. In all Cantona's time in the Premiership he only managed once to even get half the goals Shearer got in the same season and only managed to outsocre Le Tissier in a season once. You can tlak about Cantona's influence and the fact he wasn't simply a goalmachine, but he was harldy more influential than Shearer was at Blackburn or Le Tissier was at Southampton.
Le Tissier NOW would have been influential in that Southampton team then; it was that poor. Being influential in a poor team is nothing to write home about. Shearer was probably more influential than Cantona was; but saying someone is less influential than 1995 Alan Shearer is not an insult at all. Cantona was a quality player and was much better than Beckham ever was.
Again, Beckham in the top 50 players [as opposed to "stars"] of all time? Not even close. Not even in the top 250.
Matt Le Tissier was Southampton, he kept them in the Premiership for years and managed to conistently outscore Cantona whilst Cantona was surrounded by the best players in the league and Le Tissier some of the worst. And my point about Shearer is not jus 1995, but throughout their Prmeirhsip careers Cantona only once managed to score 50% or more of the goals Shearer did in a season and that was in Cantona's top scoring season when he scored 18 goals to Shearer's 31. Cantona created plenty of goals for other players but not so much more than Shearer (or Le Tissier) to make it any way arguable that he was a better forward at the time And that's not even mentioning the numerous other forwards who consistently outscored him. Despite my point that Cantona was not even the best or 2nd best forward in the League in his time in the Prmeiership he was a great player, but Beckham was the best player in the League full-stop for several seasons and the League was better. The Man Utd of Cantona's prime dominated the League, but could've only dreamed of winning the CL.
Like jcsd said Matt Le Tissier was Southampton. And he was a great goal scorer and one of my all time favorite players I still have a bunch of his trading cards from when my uncle used to send them to me for my birthday when I was a kid. The one slight on him though is that he only played for England a few times and I am pretty sure he never scored for them... The problem with these lists that that they skew toward goal scores. Players such as Roy Keane whom is arguable one of the D Mids ever to play the game have not appeared on a single list in this thread. (I may have missed him but I am pretty sure here is not on them) And really skew toward players on great teams which have the luxurey of having other great players around them were as players such as Le Tissier whom had he played for a Man utd et al would be talked about in a different light. There is also a skew for players on perennial world cup teams. It is not George Weah or Ryan Giggs fualt they never played in a world cup.* Giggs by the way holds a rediculous amount of records in English soccer. Yet I did not see him in to many lists either. And I would venture to say that he is a damn sight better than Becks. And as far as Beckham's goal scoring ability lets see him do this. For me this is still the most amazing goal of all time (I feel I should put it out there Bergkamp is my favorite player of all time, and arsenal has been my favorite team since I was 8 and I am almost 29 now.) [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DNfgibZO5o"]YouTube - Dennis Bergkamp goal Arsenal v Newcastle[/ame] So whilst Beckham is an above average player he is not a top 50 player.
nah, i dont need to read all the thread. if he gets lucky he may make the top 100 players, maybe and only bc he played a few months with madrid.
Nedved: That's rather close, but I would rate Nedved higher because he was the best player in the world in the season 2003/04 (Won the Ballon D'or and was robbed in the FIFA World Award) and made a brilliant apperance at the EURO that year. Roberto Carlos and Baresi: Not even close. Roberto Carlos was 2nd in the FIFA World Player of the Year Award which is a lot harder to manage as a defender. He won one WC, 3 CL and I consider him the best LWB for pretty much a decade. Well and Baresi is one of the best defensemen ever don't need to argue much here. That's because he is a Goalie. Nice list. All these players are CLEARY better than Becks. You could argue about Viera though. I try to list 50 more player to prove beckham wouldn't even make the Top 100. (no order ofc) 1) Didi 2) Arthur Friedenreich 3) Sándor Kocsis 4) Lionel Messi 5) Cristiano Ronaldo 6) Thierry Henry 7) Falcão 8) Elías Figueroa 9) Michael Laudrup 10) Sepp Maier 11) Uwe Seeler 12) Fritz Walter 13) Helmut Rahn 14) József Bozsik 15) Nándor Hidegkuti 16) Josef Masopust 17) Vavá 18) Leônidas da Silva 19) Johan Neeskens 20) Gérson 21) Jairzinho 22) Gianni Rivera 23) Sandro Mazzola 24) Hristo Stoichkov 25) Raúl González 26) Gianluigi Buffon 27) Iker Casillas 28) Jimmy Greaves 29) Nils Liedholm 30) Juan Alberto Schiaffino 31) Giacinto Facchetti 32) Paolo Maldini 33) Gunnar Nordahl 34) Zizinho 35) Omar Sívori 36) Denis Law 37) Kevin Keegan 38) Stanley Matthews 39) Paolo Rossi 40) Roberto Rivelino 41) Oleg Blokhin 42) László Kubala 43) Josef Bican 44) Matthias Sindelar 45) Ernst Ocwirk 46) Ricardo Zamora 47) František Plánička 48) Tostão 49) Obdulio Varela 50) Luigi Riva In the end it was really hard to name some players - so I think Beckham might make the top 150. If you don't agree with some of the names on my list I will explain to you why I think that these players were superior to Beckham.
Perhaps you're thinking of this from George Best: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/618154.stm
50 best MLS player all-time? MAYBE! Going on MLS performances alone, I am pretty sure I can find 5 other right sided midfielders in the history of MLS that I would take before becks.
1. Di Stefano 2. Maradona/Pele 3. Zidane or Ronaldo or Puskas Then everybody else Bekams is like top 200 of good free kickers
- Pavel Nedved never won the Champions League while Beckham has. - Pavel Nedved has never even made the top 3 for the FIFA World Player Award while Beckham has made it twice. - You can argue as well that Beckham was robbed of the FIFA World Player Award in 1999 when Manchester United won the Treble. Sorry, but you do not have a strong case for ranking Pavel Nedved above Beckham. After reviewing Carlos and Baresi, I agree that they should be placed higher than Beckham. I looked at the Real Madrid roster for the first two times Carlos won the Champions League and arguably, he was the best player on the roster. For the 3rd Champions League Carlos won, Zidane was the best player on the roster and contributed more to Real Madrid's win of the Champion's League than Carlos did.