Great (or good) footballers who didn't make much impact for their National Teams

LawCharltonBest

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The "Why isn't Zirkzee playing for Holland if he's good enough for United?" talk has got me thinking of top players who never really made much impact at International level

(And I'm not saying Zirkzee is a 'great' or 'top' player yet - I know how picky some of you are)

Carragher springs to mind as an example
 
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John XII said:
Great player?
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Look, it's subjective. Most people know who he is and accept that he was a very good player. Can we not turn this into a debate on who was great or not and be anal about my wording.

Do you have anything to offer this thread or was that it?
 
DDG has to be near the top of this list IMO. Easy to only remember the end.
 
LawCharltonBest said:
Look, it's subjective. Most people know who he is and accept that he was a very good player. Can we not turn this into a debate on who was great or not and be anal about my wording.

Do you have anything to offer this thread or was that it?
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Fair enough, I just thought it was an odd example.
 
The examples so far (including mine) are players who didn't really get selected. Should there also be players who were often selected but were only good for their club?
 
Giggs.

"Ryan Giggs won 64 caps for Wales during his career. This does not even put him in the top 10 most capped players for Wales, despite a Manchester United career that lasted from ages 17 to 41."

Either Fergie's influence or Giggs had feck all interest in international football.
 
Definitely in the good category rather than great - Sylvain Distin. Uncapped as France were stacked. For me he was a top 10 PL central defender often during his career in England and overall would be easily be top 50 since the PL formed. Maybe as high as top 30.
 
Great players:
Totti
A. Del Piero
Giggs (and probably a fair share of players from small to minnow-level countries. Possible examples include Weah and George Best.)
A number of otherwise highly rated Italian defenders were generally behind even greater players in the pecking order for much of their careers (specifiically Ferri and Vierchowod, and arguably guys like Benarrivo and Panucci).
Di Stefano has that reputation, but I'm not entirely sure it's quite accurate.

Good:
Dybala
Icardi
Le Tissier
McManaman
Edmundo
Rai (famously, despite initially building around him in 94)
Elber
Any number of English and Italian forwards from the Nineties (Zola and Signori may be the most notable)
Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink

Roberto Pruzzo won Serie A top scorer three times in the Eighties, but only won six caps in his career. That's literally all I really know about him, though.


I've had to go through some oddly specific hoops to push this post through. (It literally wouldn't let me get away with just posting "Del Piero" sans the "A.", presumably due to heuristics as a restricted poster. It's not really a unique example.)
 
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Scholl and Effenberg, too. I'd add Schuster, but he actually won a European Championship before leaving the national team, so your mileage might vary.
 
Totti was great for Italy at the Euros 2000 also played well in 06. Ended up on the team of the tournaments on both occasions.

Vidic
Drogba
Raul
 
Lehmann, Ter Stegen

Great goalkeepers who were unfortunately bench players due to playing in the same era as Goat contenders Kahn and Neuer.

Lehmann did play a fantastic World Cup 2006 though, and who knows Ter Stegen might get his chance one day.
 
Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes. Dominated Europe for about 5 years but it was not enough to play for England
 
Basically any of the england stars of the 2004-2014 era, so much talent and never delivered when it mattered.

Specially Scholes he was so great for us but barely featured for England, I know there we're Gerrard and Lampard but still Scholes was really class but for whatever reason he never showed it at international level unfortunately.
 
Cantona?

His time was a bit before I paid attention to national teams outside of Germany, so just guessing here
 
Davicho said:
Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes. Dominated Europe for about 5 years but it was not enough to play for England
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Scholes was sort of understandable, but Carrick really should have played a lot more. We were playing people like Scott Parker and Gareth Barry ahead of him, not bad players (especially Barry) but Carrick was better
 
Querulous Megapode said:
Great players:
Totti
A. Del Piero
Giggs (and probably a fair share of players from small to minnow-level countries. Possible examples include Weah and George Best.)
A number of otherwise highly rated Italian defenders were generally behind even greater players in the pecking order for much of their careers (specifiically Ferri and Vierchowod, and arguably guys like Benarrivo and Panucci).
Di Stefano has that reputation, but I'm not entirely sure it's quite accurate.

Good:
Dybala
Icardi
Le Tissier
McManaman
Edmundo
Rai (famously, despite initially building around him in 94)
Elber
Any number of English and Italian forwards from the Nineties (Zola and Signori may be the most notable)
Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink

Roberto Pruzzo won Serie A top scorer three times in the Eighties, but only won six caps in his career. That's literally all I really know about him, though.


I've had to go through some oddly specific hoops to push this post through. (It literally wouldn't let me get away with just posting "Del Piero" sans the "A.", presumably due to heuristics as a restricted poster. It's not really a unique example.)
Click to expand...

Yeah, he had a weird Italy career, never really brought the same quality he showed for Juve.

Still 4th all time top scorer, scored the goal that got to the WC in 2002, scored the goal to save them from a group stage exit. Sealed the win vs Germany in 2006 and has a WC winners medal.

Think his injury in 98 and subsequent poor performances and those misses in Euro 2000 final were always kind of hanging over him.
 
Shane88 said:
Giggs.

"Ryan Giggs won 64 caps for Wales during his career. This does not even put him in the top 10 most capped players for Wales, despite a Manchester United career that lasted from ages 17 to 41."

Either Fergie's influence or Giggs had feck all interest in international football.
Click to expand...

Wales played fewer games than other nations during those years as we never qualified for any tournaments so the only competetive matches were the qualifying groups. Giggs decided very early on that he was going to prioritize his health and so he did not play in friendly matches and also would tend to skip dead rubbers when we had 2 or 3 group games remaining but were out of contention for qualifying. I don't blame him one bit for taking this approach as we had few decent players during his prime so it was a waste of his time.
 
George Best only made 37 appearances for Norn Iron. Should’ve had so many more.
 
This thread started with a Dutch reference.

Hasselbaink and Roy Maakay for the Netherlands in late 90s/early 2000s.

Hasselbaink was top scorer in Spain in 99/00 and then a prolific scorer back in the prem for Chelsea. Maakay brilliant at Deportivo for many years and did fairly well at Bayern Munich.

Jimmy Floyd won just 23 caps and never played for them again after their failure to make 2002 World cup. Maakay won 43 caps but only 6 goals.

After Euro 2000 Bergkamp immediately retired and Van Nistelrooy was out for a year with ACL so there were opportunities.

Just looking at the 2002 qualifiers and Van Gaal only started Kluivert upfront for the 2-2 with ROI in September 2000. Hasselbaink started the Portugal away game in March 2001 and scored. Then RVN returned off the bench in Estonia in June 2001, scored twice to win them the game late and that was it for the two mentioned to get any serious starts.
 
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