Billy No Mates Draft

The depth of quality was such that it's understandable why many greats weren't selected. There were a few who were good fits given the constraints who I'll throw into that mix - McGrain, Hanappi, Bremner, Netto, Mackay, Goncalves, Moreno, Schiaffino, Cubillas, Deyna, Zmuda, Joya, Spencer, Erico, Leonidas, Sindelaar, Albert, Dalglish.
 
crappycraperson said:
I was sure Lato would be picked as well.
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Or Shearer really, he doesn't block that many players and IMO can be a starter for some of the teams.

Also Meredith, Amaro, Seedorf, Reuter, Kaltz, Irwin, Zagallo, Prohaska, Guardiola, Stielike, Ballack, missed the cut.
 
No one mentioned Pirlo yet? It's shocking that no one picked him.
 
Enigma_87 said:
Friday and weekend is a bit congested for me, let me get back to you for tomorrow in the next couple of hours, if not we can play early next week - Monday/Tuesday?
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Next week not great for me - I'm not sure when the best day is yet, would need to confirm over weekend.
 
To really add a bit of spice lads, why not say who should have picked who and in place of whom? After all there were loads of great players who were picked already filling most of these roles.
 
Gio said:
Next week not great for me - I'm not sure when the best day is yet, would need to confirm over weekend.
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ok, mate, let me see my schedule if we can go with it it tomorrow, but I'll probably have a business trip during the day and won't be available most of the time, only on phone. If not, let me know what is the most convenient time for you next week.
 
Balu said:
Pirlo is a final worthy player in the right set-up though, none of these guys is.
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At times I think he gets a tough gig on here. When I helped @Raees with his team in the great Euros draft, I never quite got the impression folk were completely sold on him amongst the top boys despite his brilliance in 2012.
 
Enigma_87 said:
ok, mate, let me see my schedule if we can go with it it tomorrow, but I'll probably have a business trip during the day and won't be available most of the time, only on phone. If not, let me know what is the most convenient time for you next week.
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Monday/Tuesday might be possible if not. Obviously good if we can both take part!
 
It's always difficult with the second strikers. Unless they can play out wide they are competing for the same spots as the really big hitters.
 
Gio said:
Monday/Tuesday might be possible if not. Obviously good if we can both take part!
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Great :)

Gio said:
To really add a bit of spice lads, why not say who should have picked who and in place of whom? After all there were loads of great players who were picked already filling most of these roles.
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I'd take Littbarski over Hamrin and Conti. Shearer instead of Vieri and Greaves. Terry instead of Koeman. Piet Kaizer certainly as 12th man to provide width if possible. Seedorf in the middle for some of the guys.
 
Enigma_87 said:
Not sure about joga, but there will be a big uproar if you put Xavi in a 2 man midfield :D
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Say what.
roberto-rivelino-football-228.jpg
 
Enigma_87 said:
Great :)



I'd take Littbarski over Hamrin and Conti. Shearer instead of Vieri and Greaves. Terry instead of Koeman. Piet Kaizer certainly as 12th man to provide width if possible. Seedorf in the middle for some of the guys.
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Depends on the fit though - different types of players. Hamrin provides much more goal threat than Pierre, while Conti has that excellent World Cup in Spain to his credit. Greaves' record shows that he's a better goalscorer than Shearer and dovetails nicer with Zico. Vieri might be a better comparison given their respective aerial strengths and Shearer obviously blocks fewer modern legends. To be fair going down that route and that type of striker might have lend itself towards an earlier powerhouse, a Nordahl for instance, who matches up on both pedigree and blocking.
 
Gio said:
Depends on the fit though - different types of players. Hamrin provides much more goal threat than Pierre, while Conti has that excellent World Cup in Spain to his credit. Greaves' record shows that he's a better goalscorer than Shearer and dovetails nicer with Zico. Vieri might be a better comparison given their respective aerial strengths and Shearer obviously blocks fewer modern legends. To be fair going down that route and that type of striker might have lend itself towards an earlier powerhouse, a Nordahl for instance, who matches up on both pedigree and blocking.
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Well I'm not sure how Pierre is rated around here, but he's one of the best dribblers and has shone on all levels(as Hamrin of course) but as an out wide winger I'd prefer him. Of course it's down to preference as one might go for one or the other depends on how they fit the system.

As for Shearer he's one of my fave out and out strikers and he's a bit unique in terms of power and placement. I'm not sure how his goal scoring records are comparable as Shearer had two ops and was not the same player after the second one. At Blackburn he had 3 season he hit 30 or more goals in the league(which was not matched by Greaves) and didn't play 42 games like Greaves did but 38.

Their difference is like 40 goals or something in total? But if you look at it I think the Premiership era in which Shearer played is certainly more competitive than the late 50's and early 60's in first division.

As for Vieri, he's unique striker as well, but I'd prefer Shearer. I'd rank Shearer par with Batistuta in terms of tier and goalscorer.

He blocks like Scholes, Gerrard, Lampard, Gascoigne and couple of defenders that didn't get picked anyway. He was perfect for the draft criteria and would be pity not to see him in contention.

As for Nordahl I'm not sure how much love he'll get but he's certainly at the same level, if not better than some of the above.
 
harms said:
Eduard Streltsov

Last week, Valentin Ivanov was finally given the gold medal he missed out on at the 1956 Olympics. The Soviet forward had been a key member of the side but was injured in the semi-final against Bulgaria, missed the final and fell foul of the policy of the time that dictated only those who played in the gold-medal match received medals. Inevitably, thoughts also drifted to the other great forward who missed out on the final: Eduard Streltsov. His gold medal will never be awarded.

Streltsov had been magnificent in the semi-final. The right-back Nikolay Tyschenko had broken a collarbone and, with Ivanov also struggling, the USSR were effectively down to nine men when Bulgaria took the lead early in extra-time. Streltsov, though, dragged his side forward, scored the equaliser after 112 minutes and then set up an improbable winner four minutes later.

The Soviet coach, Gavriil Kachalin wanted a front pair who played together at club level, so with Ivanov out of the final, he dropped Streltsov as well. He was replaced by Nikita Simonyan, who offered him his medal after the final. Streltsov refused. "He said to me, 'Nikita, I will win many other trophies,'" recalled Simonyan. He was wrong.

His confidence was understandable. Even at 18, Streltsov was a tall, powerful forward, possessed of a fine first touch and extraordinary footballing intelligence. A year earlier, he had come seventh in the voting for European Player of the Year. Charismatic and good-looking to boot, it seemed that he had the world at his feet.

And then, on May 25 1958, he left the USSR's pre-World Cup training camp at Tarasovka, just outside Moscow, and went to a party at a dacha belonging to Eduard Karakhanov, a military officer recently returned from a posting in the far east. The following morning he was arrested and charged with the rape of Marina Lebedeva, a young woman he'd met at the party.

He confessed, apparently after being told that, by doing so, he'd be allowed to play in the World Cup. He was promptly sentenced to 12 years in the gulag, and was quietly airbrushed from history. Released after seven years, remarkably, he returned to his club, Torpedo - always the smallest of the five Moscow sides - and in his first season back led them to the league title. In 1967 and 1968 he was named Soviet Player of the Year. Whatever happened at Tarasovka that night, his is an astonishing story. The question that won't go away is: was he guilty?

Russian football - and western journalists looking for an easy story - would love to believe Streltsov was framed, and it is not difficult to understand why. He remains the greatest outfield player Russia has ever produced and it is not inconceivable that, given the opportunity to play, he would have outshone even the 17-year-old Pele at the 1958 Word Cup. It would be easier to revere him, though, if he were not a convicted rapist. That is why there is a need to exonerate him, but it is also easy to understand why Russian football is so drawn to a talent who withstood state oppression and emerged triumphant - how it would love that to be an allegory for its own travails.

The obvious question to ask is why anyone would have framed Streltsov. There is a theory that he was targeted for refusing to leave Torpedo, which was based on the ZIL motor factory, to join Dinamo, the team of the KGB, but the more plausible reason has its roots in his womanising. There seems to have been a general concern that Streltsov was becoming rather too much of a celebrity, but the specific problem was his supposed relationship with the daughter of Yekaterina Furtseva, the only woman ever to become a member of the Politburo.

Svetlana Furtseva was 16, and apparently besotted with Streltsov. Her mother, a favourite of Nikita Khrushchev, met the forward early in 1957 at a reception at the Kremlin to celebrate the Olympic victory. She mentioned his likely marriage to her daughter, to which he replied: "I already have a fiancée and I will not marry her." As if that wasn't humiliating enough, he was later heard to say to a friend (depending which account you believe) either "I would never marry that monkey" or "I would rather be hanged than marry such a girl." If the conspiracy theorists are to be believed, it was at that moment his card was marked.

Certainly the reaction to his sending-off in Odessa that April appears excessive. The headline in Sovetsky Sport read: "This is not a hero", and several letters were printed, supposedly from members of the proletariat, condemning Streltsov as an example of the evils of western imperialism.

The Department of Soviet Football seems never to have warmed to Streltsov. An internal memo even criticised the timing of his wedding. "We found out before the important friendly against Romania that he had married," it read. "This shows how weak the educational work at Torpedo is." Communist Party archives apparently reveal a degree of distrust in the player, and Streltsov, having attracted the interest of clubs in France and Sweden following tours with Torpedo, was marked down as a possible defector. His file reads: "According to a verified source, Streltsov said to his friends in 1957 that he was always sorry to return to the USSR after trips abroad."

And then there is the matter of why Karakhanov asked Streltsov to his dacha. While it is certainly possible that he just liked the idea of having a famous footballer at his party, there are those who see something more sinister in his invitation. It is suspiciously convenient, they say, that he had returned to Russia only a few days earlier.

But all that is circumstantial. More concrete evidence of a plot comes from an interview his international coach gave shortly before his death. "When I tried to help Streltsov, I was told by police that Khrushchev himself had been informed about the case," Kachalin told the football historian, Axel Vartanyan. "I then dashed to a regional Communist Party committee headquarters and asked the first secretary to suspend the case until the end of the World Cup. I was told that nothing could be done and they pointed meaningfully upwards. I understood then that it was the end. I heard that Furtseva had it in for Streltsov, but who knows exactly what happened?"

The only certainty is that something did. "They went to the dacha," Ivanov said. "It's a dark story. Who raped whom, it's hard to say. I think if a girl goes to the suburbs for a night ... then a guy is waiting for her, as it were ... and she is the same... but I don't believe it was a set-up, no. Maybe it was the host of the dacha. I don't know who raped her, but she said it was Streltsov. So it's a dark story." Perhaps significantly, none of the players to whom I spoke were prepared, even now, to categorically defend their former team-mate. "I don't remember, but I did hear that he had refused to marry Furtseva's daughter," said Viktor Shustikov.

Most odd, though, was Simonyan's reaction. "What happened with Streltsov you cannot explain," he said. "It is a mysterious thing. He wrote to his mother saying he was taking the blame for someone else. It was the system that punished Streltsov. I don't know for sure if there was a rape on the part of Streltsov, but he and the girl slept together." He shrugged. "He was young, a bachelor, unmarried ..."

Actually, Streltsov had married just under a year before. Perhaps that is an indication that he didn't take his vows particularly seriously, or perhaps Simonyan's memory is just faulty. As he broke off, Simonyan reached into a drawer in his desk and took out a book. He opened it and removed a photograph and handed it to me without a word.

The print showed four images. Two were of a dark-haired young woman - Lebedeva. In one, she was lying back on what seemed to be a hospital bed, apparently asleep, her eyes ringed with bruises. The other two were of Streltsov. In the more striking, his face, captured in profile, was streaked from nose to cheekbone with three parallel scratches. Of course there is the possibility that the photographs were doctored or the injuries inflicted at a later date, but Soviet justice rarely required such damning evidence.

Streltsov died from throat cancer in 1990, and with him went any chance of establishing the truth. Lebedeva has vanished, although there was a sighting of her at Streltsov's grave in 1997, laying flowers the day after the annual ceremony on the anniversary of his death. Perhaps he was the glorious martyr that Russian football demands, but the case is far less clear-cut than some would have us believe.
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Great - albeit disturbing, obviously - story. Has some elements to it which you hardly ever see in "legendary footballers" tales. The fact that it's unclear whether he was a victim of the regime - or simply guilty of raping a young girl - makes it all the more remarkable, and him an all the more interesting character.
 
Always amusing to see people outraged that random players they happen to fancy - in an all-time draft - go unpicked.
 
Enigma_87 said:
Well I'm not sure how Pierre is rated around here, but he's one of the best dribblers and has shone on all levels(as Hamrin of course) but as an out wide winger I'd prefer him. Of course it's down to preference as one might go for one or the other depends on how they fit the system.

As for Shearer he's one of my fave out and out strikers and he's a bit unique in terms of power and placement. I'm not sure how his goal scoring records are comparable as Shearer had two ops and was not the same player after the second one. At Blackburn he had 3 season he hit 30 or more goals in the league(which was not matched by Greaves) and didn't play 42 games like Greaves did but 38.

Their difference is like 40 goals or something in total? But if you look at it I think the Premiership era in which Shearer played is certainly more competitive than the late 50's and early 60's in first division.

As for Vieri, he's unique striker as well, but I'd prefer Shearer. I'd rank Shearer par with Batistuta in terms of tier and goalscorer.

He blocks like Scholes, Gerrard, Lampard, Gascoigne and couple of defenders that didn't get picked anyway. He was perfect for the draft criteria and would be pity not to see him in contention.

As for Nordahl I'm not sure how much love he'll get but he's certainly at the same level, if not better than some of the above.
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I agree with you on Shearer, hes up there with the best in leading an attack.
 
Enigma_87 said:
Their difference is like 40 goals or something in total? But if you look at it I think the Premiership era in which Shearer played is certainly more competitive than the late 50's and early 60's in first division.
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I'm not sure about that. English teams weren't hugely competitive in Europe in Shearer's pomp and there was clearly a hangover from the Heysel ban. At the same time, Greaves did his scoring in an English league whose best players won the big one in '66. Obviously hard to compare across eras, but very few would dispute Greaves' status as the best goalscorer in the history of the English game. Otherwise agree with the rest of your post and have always been a fan of Littbarski.
 
Chesterlestreet said:
Always amusing to see people outraged that random players they happen to fancy - in an all-time draft - go unpicked.
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If you are referring to Shearer. Wouldn't call it an outrage it's done to personal opinion and obviously personal view of the formation they are playing it.

I was a bit surprised not to see him feature as he fits the criteria and doesn't block too many people but especially with strikers there are so many that it's hard to choose one name over the other.
 
RedTiger said:
Honestly, I find these types of drafts rather boring, where everyone has an A+ team with no apparent weaknesses.
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There's a definite danger of it being a bit boring, no doubt. Still, there's a potential upside: With all teams loaded with A+ players, the crucial difference between teams will likely be balance/tactics, which could lead to some interesting debates.

Also, paradoxically, in terms of individual quality the most important players on the park could turn out to be the least obvious names: The usual suspects and heaviest hitters canceling each other out, as it were, and the more “obscure” boys being the ones that actually separate the teams quality wise.
 
Enigma_87 said:
If you are referring to Shearer.
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No, I wasn't referring to anyone in particular. Just to the fact that there is always outrage of this sort: "Unbeliavable so-and-so wasn't picked!" Well, as Gio suggests - name and shame. Who clearly dropped a bollock by not picking X (who is significantly better than Y)? That would make some sense: There's a huge batch of players here who could have been picked, and who aren't worse (certainly not significantly so) than a huge batch of players who were picked - but that's entirely understandable, not to say precisely as expected, in an all-time draft.

Even the likes of Pirlo can end up unpicked, depending on what people prefer and which set-ups are favoured. He doesn't effectively compete with every midfielder in the pool - you have to factor in how he needs to be deployed, realistically, and then look at who he should have replaced by rights (being clearly better).

Take Keegan (mentioned above): Twice Ballon winner (and as mentioned in another thread recently, he was a mere three votes away from winning it three years in succession, which would've placed him alongside Platini and Cruyff). But then Shevchenko went unpicked too: Ballon winner and an undisputed world beater for several seasons both sides of his Ballon. Florian Albert – another Ballon winner. Not picked. Alan Simonsen - unpicked Ballon winner. The list is endless and the names neglected are huge. Conclusion, it makes very little sense to single out anyone as being shocking omissions.
 
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