Great Midfields – Guardian / Observer

This is from the Guardian SportsBlog (Click here)

Nice list. All six are credits to football; although I have not seen the Everton or Liverpool midfields and have seen only grainy footage of Didi and Garrincha…

If i were to make a list, it would surely include

- The France Euro ‘00 midfield

     Djorkaeff – Vieira – Deschamps – Zidane 

    (with a backup of Pires, Petit, Karembeu and Micoud)

- The famous Arsenal midfield of the Invincible year 

   Ljungberg – Edu – Vieira - Pires 

(p.s. wonderful to see the Platini – Tigana – Giresse – Fernandez quartet, one of my first football memories…)

The Rushmore Part 1 (Cricket)

Grace, Bradman, Sobers, Warne

Grace – Because without the straight bat, cricket would have been baseball.

Bradman – because he played cricket.

Sobers – The best cricketer of all time.

Warne – Is the most charismatic superstar I have seen, and the most Rushmore-able cricketer of the post-Sobers era.

Arsenal’s top 50

You cannot include current players..

This is the list as of now (click here)

10. Jennings.

9. Charlie George.

8. Brady.

7. Seaman.

6. Petit.

My guess for 5-1

5. Patrick Vieira.

4. Dennis Bergkamp.

3. Ian Wright.

2. Thierry Henry.

1. Tony Adams.

The names i am sure of…. not of the ranking though.

40 greatest players of the Open era

If you go look at Tennis Magazine’s (click here) top 40 of the Open era, you wonder about two big things

1. How different will it be today, and it has just been three years…

2. That it is a little biased towards the modern era, and a little biased towards American players.

Will try a redux sometime, but here’s the end statement…

The greatest player of the Open era, Male or Female, if OBVIOUSLY Steffi Graf. One is blind (or biased) if one does not see it.

And this is for all my Boris-fan Pete-admirer childhood and adolescence, and genuine admiration for Martina, Chris, Sabatini and Seles. This is coming from a never-supported-Graf-in-any-tournament tennis fan.

But isn’t it obvious?

Sudden realization…

Remember that team I made?

That team, if you look at the clubs these guys played in, will look like this

———– ManUre ———–

–Milan – Milan – Milan – Milan -

 ——–Inter – Milan ——

- Juve —————Juve -

———Napoli ——–

——–Sampdoria ——

One from English clubs and the rest all from Italy (and I could as well have put Buffon in place of Schmeichel, there’s hardly anything to choose between the two)!

Best XI of my generation…

The question -

Of the football players you’ve seen live or on TV in your lifetime, who, as per you, are the best XI position by position? And also, which formation will you play them.

My list, and before that my own psychobabble… -

———————- Schmeichel—————-
—Cafu ———– Baresi — Nesta —— Maldini –
————-Matthaus ——– Rijkaard ———–
— ………
Hell, now what do I do? The best Striker- Support striker commbo would be Bati – Maradona
But cannot put Bati above Van Basten, why, even Baggio.

But I like the big guy-small guy brit kind strike line up, so well, Bati is the best Brit – style striker I ever saw. And however good v. Basten and Baggio were, they were not a patch on Diego(d). So.

———————- Schmeichel—————-
—Cafu ———– Baresi — Nesta —— Maldini —
————-Matthaus ——– Rijkaard ————
–Obvious Frenchman1 ——- Obvious Frenchman2 —-
———————- Maradona —————–
———————- Batistuta ——————

Honorable mentions – a few hundred. Starting from Rinat Dasaev to, really, Cesc Fabregas.

__________________________________________________

Now here’s to you. Put up your team. Comment on mine.