1. Sir Stanley Matthews (ENG)
2. Cliff Bastin (ENG)
3. Pelé (BRA)
4. Alfredo Di Stefano (ARG)
5. Bobby Moore (ENG)
6. Gordon Banks (ENG)
7. Johann Cruyff (HOL)
8. Franz Beckenbauer (GER)
9. Diego Maradona (ARG)
10. Eddie Hapgood (ENG)

Just count the number of goalkeepers and defenders there are in your 11. Only 1 in your team, but there would be 5 in a real XI. That's why I've included 3 efenders and a goalkeeper is my 10. It's more balanced, since defenders can make great players too.

 

My Very Personal Top 10

The order isn't as important as the selection itself - I'm not sure who would be the 3rd best ever. But here it goes:

1- Pelé (Brazil 58/62/66/70)
2- Diego Maradona (Argentina 86/90/94)
3- Mané Garrincha (Brazil 58/62)
4- Franz Beckenbauer (Germany 74/78)
5- Johann Cruyff (Holland 74)
6- Alfredo Di Stefano (Argentina, I don't remember the years )
7- Nilton Santos (Brazil 50/54/58/62)
8- Ferenc Puskas (Hungary 54)
9- Lev Yashin (USSR 58)
10- Stanley Matthews (England and my memory went poof again)

 

If you're talking about the best 11 players in football's history, my list would be:

Maradona
Pelé
Cruyff
Di Stéfano
Kubala
Puskas
Beckenbauer
Van Basten
Garrincha
Zidane

...and Puyol

 

i'd like to add Eusebio to the list.

 

Just count the number of goalkeepers and defenders there are in your 11. Only 1 in your team, but there would be 5 in a real XI. That's why I've included 3 efenders and a goalkeeper is my 10. It's more balanced, since defenders can make great players too.

i know, but im not trying to make a team out of these players,
i just listed the best 11 for me, and if u want to add defenders and keepers where is Franco Baresi and Lev Yashin in your almost all England list

 

My list:

1- Pelé - the best ever. Perfect in all aspects of the game (dribbling, passing, shooting, heading, and so on). Won 3 WCs.
2- Garrincha - the best dribbler of the world
3- Di Stefano - the most complete player at his time
4- Beckenbauer - the brave leader of Germany in WCs 70 and 74
5- Cruyff - the symbol of "total football"
6- Maradona - a genius, took Argentina to win one WC.
7- Bobby Moore
8- Nilton Santos
9- Meazza
10 - Jairzinho

 

1. Sir Stanley Matthews (ENG)
2. Cliff Bastin (ENG)
3. Pelé (BRA)
4. Alfredo Di Stefano (ARG)
5. Bobby Moore (ENG)
6. Gordon Banks (ENG)
7. Johann Cruyff (HOL)
8. Franz Beckenbauer (GER)
9. Diego Maradona (ARG)
10. Eddie Hapgood (ENG)

Just count the number of goalkeepers and defenders there are in your 11. Only 1 in your team, but there would be 5 in a real XI. That's why I've included 3 efenders and a goalkeeper is my 10. It's more balanced, since defenders can make great players too.

Excuse me Bastin, I respect your football culture but I think that if you ask to one million people in Germany, Italy, Spain and France I think that hardly 10 would be able to tell you who Cliff Bastin and Eddie Hapgood are..... so, since a champion is always famous, find some famous players.....

 

Then I hope that you are not saying that Matthews and Bastin are better than Pelè, Maradona, Beckenbauer, Crujff.....
well, as usual if u say that you saw a donkey in the sky I have no evidences that you were wrong....

Well, try to forget that you are English once in your life....

 

Excuse me Bastin, I respect your football culture but I think that if you ask to one million people in Germany, Italy, Spain and France I think that hardly 10 would be able to tell you who Cliff Bastin and Eddie Hapgood are..... so, since a champion is always famous, find some famous players.....

thats right im still searching the web to find out who these guys are :tongue:

 

The fact is that they were surely two very good players in England in the 30s-40s (they played for Arsenal.... eh eh eh...no comment, Bastin), probably in the world too.... and probably they would be famous if England participated in the WC of 1930, 1934 and 1938, but they did not participate and now nobody out of England know them....
Now, since there is no way to say which were the best players (they can't play together) we should choose the players who where more famous.
No doubt: the most famous was Pelè.
The usual question is: was Maradona better than Pelè? I don't know, but surely Maradona is at least the second.
And since somebody say that alfredo Di Stefano was better than both them, I can say that he is probably at least the third.
The remaining names are the usual: Platini, Beckenbauer, Crujff, Eusebio, Puskas, Garrincha.....

 

Being Italian, I would have assumed that you would know who Hapgood was pretty damn well. Remember the Battle of Highbury, 14th November 1934? Remember how the 'World Champions' of Orsi and Italy were defeated handsomely by a gallant England team? Remember which England player had the honour of being captain that day?

Despite Italy's best efforts to make it a war out on the Highbury turf, the English players never lowered themselves to the level of the pitiful Italian hooligans. For this, Hapgood deserves to be commended.

Domestically, he was the Arsenal captain at the time when Arsenal was undoubtedly the greatest team on earth, and marshalled his defence so efficiently that we conceded the least goals, and kept the most clean sheets for 9 straight seasons.

The Arsenal 1934 team was by far the greatest club football side of all time, and there been a World Cup between 1863 and 1930, England would have won all of them. For a country that was dominated the football world for 87 years, I would have expected even more than the paltry 5 of my top 10. I could start naming a 10 that consists players from only before World War Two, but being a bunch of shallow, anti-English morons, I wouldn't expect you to know any of them. For shame.

 

Objectivity: 0 (zero).

I respect your football culture but if you don't learn to be objective you will make just laugh..... cause seeing your Top11 a person who is not English will laugh....

 

Thats a joke bastin, Cliff Bastin dosent compare to Diego Maradona and yet you have him as number 2 in your list and Diego no.9??

 

To quote Butch Cassidy, "Who are these guys?"

The Arsenal 1934 team was by far the greatest club football side of all time, and there been a World Cup between 1863 and 1930, England would have won all of them. For a country that was dominated the football world for 87 years, I would have expected even more than the paltry 5 of my top 10. I could start naming a 10 that consists players from only before World War Two, but being a bunch of shallow, anti-English morons, I wouldn't expect you to know any of them. For shame.

Yeah, we should all be really ashamed. :rollani: After all, if there had been a World Cup between 1863 and 1930, England 'would have won all of them'. :wth: Heh. And of course 'The Arsenal 1934 team was by far the greatest club football side of all time'... silly of us not to realize that. :googly: :dielaugh: :lala: And Cliff Bastin and Eddie Hapgood (also known by the nickname of 'WHO?!?') are clearly two of the 10 best players ever - anyone who denies that can only be a shallow (???) and anti-English person. :stress: :relieved:

Are you serious, Bastin? Listen, England may have been the first country to play football, but they certainly were never the best at it, sorry to break this to you. These guys may have been hotshots back in 1930 but nobody in the world knows about it. So they may even be two of England's all-time Top 10, but if you think they're among the world's best you know nothing about world football, kid - there's a lot more to football history than 'the gallant England team' of 1934.

Another thing: You can't have a 'World Cup' before the sport has been spread around the world - so being the only ones in the world who play the sport doesn't mean you're 'world champions' at it, it just means you're the only ones who play it. There's a difference. 'If' there had been a Cup England would've won? Hey, 'if' Barbie took steroids she would be G.I. Joe. :cap:

 

:howler:


Jesus, Garrincha. You keeping talking this kind of brilliant smack and we'll have no choice but to rush deliver your pass into the Hall of Fame. Great, great stuff. roud:


I love the line about "better known by the nickname of WHO?!!". :crylaughing:

 

Bastin, the inclusion of Bastin and Hapgood in your top 11 players of all time is based on what exactly?

 

Ehi Garrincha,
I remember that in a Over 34 (or 35) Mundial in Brasil ten years ago more or less there was a Brazilian player who made the "torcida" go crazy every time he made a dribbling. His name was Cafuringa or something similar....
He is not a top11 but when Bastin talked about.... Bastin, I don't understand why, I thought to Cafuringa!

 

:howler:


Jesus, Garrincha. You keeping talking this kind of brilliant smack and we'll have no choice but to rush deliver your pass into the Hall of Fame. Great, great stuff. roud:

Garrincha as his avatar is a :star:
ive seen many of his posts one beats the other,

 

Bastin, the inclusion of Bastin and Hapgood in your top 11 players of all time is based on what exactly?

Despite the efforts of the maximum wage in British football, Arsenal were the best club side in the world for nigh on thirty years. Hapgood was the captain, Bastin was the best player.

Santos (or the Metrostars) could never boast this, yet Pelé is called the best player of all time. Maradona's clubs of Boca, Napoli, and Barcelona have never been the best sides in the world (except a short stint in the mid-1970s with Barcelona, IMO).

Hapgood was the best positional defender of all time. He snuffed out any attack coming his way, and dealt with the world's best wingers with ease.

Bastin was a outside-left (left-wing), but still managed a scoring record of almost 1 every 2 games across his entire career. Not only that, but his best years were taken away by the war, he was partially deaf, and had major problems with his knee cartilidge.

It's also strange that you have never heard of Cliff Bastin. If you really have not, why didn't you question the relevance of my username? He was the greatest player in the world from about 1933 to 1943. No other player can claim to be the best for that long. Pelé wasn't the best in 1966, nor was Maradona the best in 1990, yet these players are rated as being infinitely better by most.

The ignorance of society to the ability of the pre-World War Two players is undeniable. Amognst them, were some of the greatest players of all time (Bastin and Hapgood being probably the two best of all of them). Also note that it is obvious that England would have won the World Cup in 1930-8. We beat every team claiming to be the best year after year. We won against Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Scotland, Spain, and France. Never once did we lose to any of these teams in that time (bar Scotland once out of 12 games). That just about covers it.

 

I heard that the Incas played a game somewhat reminiscent of football. The best Inca player was Cecchu Hacchu. His career covered twenty years from 1460 to 1479. Also, he had a terrible flu one winter and had to feed seven children. It took the world four hundred years to get a better player. Had the World Cup been played in the fifteenth century, the Incas would have won an amazing twenty-five titles.

 

Actually, the Mayans played a similar game and a player named Tlothuacan was the recognized giant of the area. There was great debate as to which player was the greatest, Tlothuacan or Cecchu Haccu, but comparing players from different eras is always a dicey proposition at best. Sadly, rampant addiction to the local pulque soon reduced the great Tlothuacan to little more than a pathetic farce of a player, but for a few years he was a genius. We wouldn't even know who the hell he is except for the fact a small enclave of devoted fans bring up his name every time the game is discussed.

 

Greatness is a matter of exposure.

 

Re: To quote Butch Cassidy, "Who are these guys?"

Hey, 'if' Barbie took steroids she would be G.I. Joe. :cap:

Bwahahahahahahaha

BTW, I'm the current world champion in CCWMTN.

Can anyone dispute that?

 

In 1530 in Florence there was a famous football game between the "white" and the "green" team. The coach of the "white" team was Giovanni Trapattoni, at the time 40 years old. The "white" team scored one goal with Cecco Vieri (ancestor of Bobo) then Trap subsituted the forward with Di Livio (the actual one!) and the "green" team scored twice thanks to a forward coming from South America (Checchu Hacchu!!!).
Trapattoni was impaled for two day in Piazza Santa Croce while the supporters of "white" team spitted at him.
The historians reported the following sentence by Trap: "It was not my fault. Everybody could see what the Incas referee Byron Moreno did!". But nobody cared about him.

The moral is: in 1530 Italy would have won the WC (... but not with Trap as a coach) or at least would have played the final against Maya or Incas.

And YES Checchu Hacchu is better than Maradona. I'm not sure about Tlothuacan.

 

You guys crack me up. I'm not sure if any of you guys did (or do) sports at A-level of equivalent in your country (I know I didn't), but a principle pillar is that a sport requires codified rules. The codification of football happened in the mid-19th century, in a pretty long and drawn out process. Therefore, the Incas didn't invent the sport football, the Florentines didn't invent the sport football, but they invented 'games'. The Universities of Cambridge and Oxford invented the sport - the first known forms of a game resembling football was that of the Ancient Mesopotamians, for the record.

The moral of this is this: World Cup is played for a sport, not a game, therefore, the first World Cup that could have been held would have been in 1850.