I was just reading this fascinating blog piece by Miguel Delaney on the Football Pantheon blog.In fairness he is not like others who just make a list a feck off,he devised a system and stands by it. For the full list and a few words on each team and also the teams who do not make it. http://footballpantheon.com/2011/05/the-50-greatest-european-club-sides/ How it works? The key factor to calculating Europe’s all-time club side was to quantify a team’s dominance of their given era. This was the only comparable characteristic that universally cut across every time period. To do this, a weighted scale of points was created for performances in various competitions. So, for example, 100 points were awarded for a first-place finish in a 20-team major league, 90 for second, 85 for third and so forth; 120 for first in the Champions League, 110 for getting to the final; 50 for first in a domestic cup, 40 for getting to the final and so on down. Bonus points were also awarded for actually winning competitions. This meant that in the 2004-05 season for example, when Chelsea won the Premier League and League Cup, got to the semi-final of the Champions League and fifth round of the FA Cup, they achieved 260 points out of a potential 390. That worked out at 67% domination of the season. So, when that Chelsea 2004-07 side’s stats for their three seasons were put together, they ended up with 62%; or a dominance figure of 620 points. However, this created the obvious problem that a team who briefly blazed a trail to win a treble in one season would end up with 1,000 points (for 100%). By contrast, Ajax 1965-73 would only get 770 for eight seasons, despite the fact they achieved 100% in one season (1971-72) and that their sustained excellence was probably the greater achievement. By the same token, Steaua Bucharest 1985-89 would get over 800 points because of the relative ease (and corruption) of the Romanian league, while Milan 1987-91 would only get 620 points despite playing in one of the most statistically competitive divisions of all time, as Serie A was in the late 80s. As such, all dominance figures were weighted against the number of years involved and the relative quality of the competitions according to Uefa coefficients. Since three-five years were the average length of a team’s ‘cycle’, this timescale was used as a mean amount. So, if a side’s era was determined to only last two years, their dominance figure was multiplied by 0.9, one 0.8, six 1.1, seven 1.2 and so forth. In order to get as complete a quantification of a team’s quality as possible, however, it was decided to award scaled bonus points for characteristics such as how difficult they were to beat, how awesome they were in attack and how disciplined they were in defence. Those are below. However, it was also acknowledged that excellence is partly determined by dramatic achievements as well as dominance and specific abilities. So the following bonus points were awarded for feats like trebles, three-in-a-rows and so forth. http://footballpantheon.com/2011/05/the-50-greatest-european-club-sides/
Paul, I came across it in June and stuck it into this thread. I thought it was an excellent bit of research. http://www.irishkop.com/forums/showthread.php?t=399 I was less impressed with his 50th greatest managers.
forget the current barca side,the finest in my memory-ac milan late 80s/early 90s,what a team that was...
The 100 greatest players of all time Part 1 In a team sport, it can often seem obscene – even absurd – to reward a single player ahead of the collective. But, equally, every match is no more than an accumulation of individual moments. Games are secured by unlikely saves, defined by timely tackles, unlocked with visionary passes and settled by important strikes. Some players undoubtedly perform these specific tasks with greater consistency and to a higher quality than others. So, as difficult as it is for any player to perform in isolation, some are clearly more important to glories than their teammates. Indeed, depending on their position and style, certain players form the building-blocks of great teams, others provide the spine and an elite minority complete teams – lifting them to greater levels. There can be no denying, for example, that Pele and Garrincha’s irreverent excellence removed a half-century of fear from Brazilian football in 1958. Or that Argentina would not have won the 1986 World Cup without Diego Maradona. Yet the counterpoint to that, of course, is that the otherwise fixed Argentine formation was specifically designed to maximise his contribution. It’s the eternal debate in football, really, when it comes to assessing the exact abilities of any player. We see it raging today about Cristiano Ronaldo, Leo Messi and Xavi. Does the system make the players or do the players make the system? The answer, naturally, depends on the individual situations but can still usually be found somewhere in between. Certainly, some very good players were fortunate enough to play almost all of their careers in systems that perfectly suited them. Other, potentially better players were equally unfortunate to spend their best years in teams that didn’t make best use of their talents. And, on that issue, Gabrielle Marcotti has posited an interesting question. What if Johan Cruyff’s family had moved to Aldershot rather than Amsterdam? Would he have been as influential – or even had his natural technique so ably enhanced – had he grown up in a footballing culture that wasn’t as ripe for innovation as Holland in the ’60s? As such, when it comes to deciding the greatest players of all time, there is always a caveat. Individuals can only ever be products of their time and place. Even in a tournament where one player imposed his personal will like no other in history, the outcome was still hostage to fortune. In 1986, Maradona was lucky to be in his prime in the kind of exhausting conditions that favoured attacking football. It could even be said that previous failures had only sharpened his resolve and thereby enhanced his performance. For once, the stars aligned. Almost literally, given the weather conditions. Would Maradona have been as effective had Carlos Bilardo persisted with 4-4-2? Would the exceptional Duncan Edwards have gone on to dominate international football had he survived Munich? Would Vava have scored so many high-profile goals had he been born Bolivian instead of Brazilian? The answer to all of these questions is open to debate. With some of the arguments possessing more persuasive evidence than others. But then that’s also the point. In a debate like this, we can only go on the evidence we have. And, despite so many conditions in his favour in 1986, there was still pressure on Maradona to perform. But the fact is that he did perform. Supremely. So, in order to determine the 100 greatest players of all time, we’ve attempted the following approach. First, we tried to isolate every player’s basic ability. Secondly, and most importantly, we attempted to examine how extensively he actually applied it within the parameters of his career. As such, application of ability is key. Because of that, there is a natural weighting towards the top teams and competitions. After all, the biggest measure of whether a player is maximising his ability comes in his battles against the very best of his time. A consequence of this, too, is that there’s greater concentration of post-war footballers. Because of the absence of fully-formed, top-level competitions in the first half of the 20th century, it was simply harder to determine how good players really were. The ‘bar’ for those eras, so to speak, was more difficult to define. But this list still accounts for truly exceptional achievement in any era, environment or location. If a pre-war player was even considered the most influential of his time – for example – then his career had to be measured. If a top team bottled a big game but one player maintained his level of performance, then that quality had to be considered favourably. And, finally, if one player drove a lesser team to Champions League qualification or a World Cup, then it had to be examined whether that feat was the equal of an international star forcing an already-competitive team over the line. But the important question, then, is whether that player was capable of stepping up to the star’s level. Could he apply his ability on an elevated field? The best players in history constantly did. The purpose of this list is to, at least, create debate; at best, point that debate in a relatively informed direction. As such, it is highly unlikely any one reader will agree with a significant minority of the list – let alone a majority or all of it. Before we invite opprobrium or rage at the placing of specific players or outright omission of others, please consider one caveat. The so-called short-list to this entry ran to almost 500. As such many exceptional players were necessarily left out. And, in many cases, the margins were so tight that even the slightest tweak in interpretation of the formula would have caused drastic changes. In saying all of that, however, we have attempted to be as honest as possible.
100 Danny Blanchflower 99 Jozsef Bozsik 98 Just Fontaine 97 Elias Figueroa 96 Josef Masopust 95 Karl-Heinz Schnellinger 94 Johnny Rep 93 Daniel Passarella 92 Marcel Desailly 91 Enzo Francescoli 90 Grzegorz Lato 89 Antonio Cabrini 88 Jose Santamaria 87 Zoltan Czibor 86 Dino Zoff 85 Luis Figo 84 Fabio Cannavaro 83 Fernando Redondo 82 Roy Keane 81 Djalma Santos 80 Matthias Sammer 79 Velibor Vasovic 78 Armando Picchi 77 David Villa 76 Dixie Dean 75 Kurt Hamrin 74 Nils Liedholm 73 Marco Tardelli 72 Jimmy Johnstone 71 Iker Casillas 70 Thierry Henry 69 Ladislao Kubala 68 Frank Rijkaard 67 John Charles 66 Arie Haan 65 Roberto Baggio 64 Samuel Eto’o 63 Omar Sivori 62 Juan Schiaffino 61 Bobby Moore 60 Peter Schmeichel 59 Ruud Krol 58 Kenny Dalglish 57 Ruud Gullit 56 Sandro Mazzola 55 Francisco Gento 54 Vava 53 Roberto Rivelino 52 Paolo Maldini 51 Michael Laudrup 50 to 1 next week