Morty_
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Its obviously Cruyff, though, any chance that Robben makes, say, top 3-5?
??Didi
I would put Robben on 3rd place, after Cruyff and Van Basten. Certainly the best Dutch player of the last few decadesIts obviously Cruyff, though, any chance that Robben makes, say, top 3-5?
I like how you included one "old" player in Cruyff and forgot half their seemingly brilliant 70s team. I doubt you´ve even seen Cruyff play, but just added him in there because "that´s what you do".
Only correct answer is Van Basten.I suggest a more realistic thread title....
Who is the second greatest Dutch player of all time?
Once Puskás left Hungary, they should have just founded their own nation and competed for that together instead of that Spain nonsense.
I still don't think that there's any debate. It's Pelé > Zico, Garrincha & Ronaldo. Ronaldo got fecked by his injuries, Zico didn't won the World Cup, Garrincha was always an alternative for those who didn't like Pelé's marketing-friendly persona. I'd be surprised if you'd be able to find any serious list where Pelé won't be on the comfortable first place, as he should.Well name who you want, there are still many more to debate the GOAT for Brazil than Holland. Many people would say Ronaldo over Pele anyway. Who would say any Holland player above Cruyff? Not many.
Hehe - true.
But the fact remains that Puskas too has official games for Spain.
Point is - I suppose: different era. Different rules. Different...everything. And also - this is about football, not passports.
Is Puskas a Hungarian footballer - or a Spanish one? Clearly Hungarian on the whole.
Di Stefano? Perhaps not as clear cut - but to me he's Argentinian. At the very least he can be reasonably considered as such when considering who the best ever Argentinian player is.
I simply forgot about him He certainly has a place next to van Persie (and Kluivert), probably slightly ahead of both based on his overall career.Since you mentioned so many players, our own Ruud couldn't even make it to your honourable mentions, alongside with the likes of RVP, Stamina, Seedorf, Davids...
An all time Dutch XI would be incredibly formidable:
---------------------Van Basten----------------------
Overmars---------Cruyff--------------Robben
--------------Gullit-------------Seedorf-------------
Frank de Boer-Rijkaard-Koeman-Blind
---------------------Van der Sar----------------------
Bench: RVN, Davids, Ronald de Boer, Kluivert, Van Bronkhorst, Van Persie, Stam, Sneijder, Bergkamp
That has to be up there with the best all time XIs any country can put out. And I'm surely overlooking a fair few.
It's obvious though, isn't it? Robben had a far better career than Van Persie and like it or now, these things tend to matter when people evaluate players. In the end, Van Persie has one league title in a professional career spanning 18 years and most people remember him primarily as that talented striker who was always injured at Arsenal. Robben achieved far more in football.
This is why the Xavi/Iniesta comparison isn't really valid. They shared all their success so it doesn't play a part in the comparison, it's all about the actual ability and there I agree that it mostly comes down to personal preference.
Garrincha was always an alternative for those who didn't like Pelé's marketing-friendly persona
I'm not trying to be rude or disagree with the selection at all and love it (specially as I grew up in Holland in the 80's / 90's and those players were my idols!), but you're missing a huge number of players from '74 & '78 when they got to the WC finals and - bit like if we were to do the Brazil all time XI there would be a lot of posters would put Cafe / Ronaldinho etc in it and not really knowing the names of the players who won the WC in the 60's and 70's. But then I wouldn't be doing research into players of 74 & 78 etc eitherAn all time Dutch XI would be incredibly formidable:
---------------------Van Basten----------------------
Overmars---------Cruyff--------------Robben
--------------Gullit-------------Seedorf-------------
Frank de Boer-Rijkaard-Koeman-Blind
---------------------Van der Sar----------------------
Bench: RVN, Davids, Ronald de Boer, Kluivert, Van Bronkhorst, Van Persie, Stam, Sneijder, Bergkamp
That has to be up there with the best all time XIs any country can put out. And I'm surely overlooking a fair few.
Well, yes, it's easy to forget because he was 18, appeared in only 17 games in all competitions and didn't score a single goal. He was subbed off an hour into the UEFA Cup final. He was seen as a big talent but he was far from a key player in that side. Whereas it's fair to say that Bayern wouldn't have made any of their three CL finals between 2010 and 2013 without Robben.Easy to forget he was the golden boy in a Feyenoord side that won the UEFA Cup in 2002.
Yeah, there is a strong 90s-to-now bias in the thread - and even the posters that do go further back kinda stop at the 70s WC teams. Moulijn and Wilkes are huge historically, although that starts taking you into generations where you really can't compare to later players anymore. Abe Lenstra would be another one from the pre-70s.Back in the '70s Feyenoord was the first Dutch team to win the Europacup 1, just before Ajax had a really dominant phase in Europe, and plenty of people the from older generations tend to rate Willem van Hanegem as the second best Dutch player ever behind Cruijff. Personally I would put Gullit and Van Basten above him, but Van Hanegem is probably the best Dutch midfielder ever. That Feyenoord team also had a truly phenomenal and unselfish left footed left winger called Coen Moulijn, who literally had a God-like status at the time and many people and former players from that generation put him on par or even above someone like Robben, yet a guy like that barely ever gets a mention on here.
Personally I'm a massive fan of guys like Robbie Rensenbrink and Frank Rijkaard.
And then there's a whole generation before the '60's and '70's. Post WW2 you had a phenomenal goalscorer called Faas Wilkes, first Dutch player to play in Italy when he signed for Inter Milan in 1949, he was Johan Cruijff's idol, obviously guys from that generation might've been incredibly special players but it's really hard to rate them accurately.
Hipsters all over the world, romantics/purist in Brazil, at least in my experience. Pelé sold his image all over the world with endless coffee adverts and his voyage to MLS — while all Garrincha ever wanted was to play football (or, to specify, to play football beautifully). Garrincha’s mental issues (that are very well documented) somehow make him an icon of a proper football, free from consumerism and publicity. Pelé even gets blamed for Garrincha dying from alcoholism (he should’ve helped him out etc).Used to be the hipster choice.
I mean - in my circles. Pelé is the one your granny knows about. Garrincha, though - he was the real genius.
And so forth.
(You can push that sort of hipsterism up a level easily too - Julinho anyone?).
Hipsters have always been idiots, though - so there's that.
Not that there's anything idiotic about rating Garrincha extremely highly. But most reasonable people with an interest in football history would - simply - say that Pelé is a notch above all things said and done.
Only Garrincha is close to greatest of all time stature from those three, I'm afraid. The other two don't have a realistic chance if we're being fair and objective.
Jairzinho definitely misses out in the true GOAT stakes — club career is somewhat underwhelming, not the best in the world on a sustained basis, and shone bright in only 1 World Cup for the Seleção (where Gérson and Pelé in particular were enormous factors even though Jairzinho scored in every match). All things considered his overall talent and accomplishments are bettered with not just the great post-modern players (like Rivaldo: who had a magnificent peak and was a difference maker in 2 World Cups + Copa América), but the likes of Zico and Didi before them — and his historical influence is also inferior to the likes of Zizinho and Leônidas.
Carlos Alberto was outstanding and probably makes it a positional-greatness ranking, but faces stiff competition from Nílton/Djalma Santos and Cafú. Would say the Top 5 for Brazil after Pelé is a near-complete lock with little room for change. In no particular order to iron out any issues regarding favoritism or era-bias...
- Garrincha
- Zico
- Romário
- Didi
- Fenômeno
Which one?
In fairness, a lot of us don't know where to place someone like Wilkes in the pantheon of greats (partly because of a lack of footage as he is featured only twice in the grainy footballia archive base), despite having him in back of our minds because of the narratives surrounding him. With the likes of Walter for Germany or Didi for Brazil, you can at least refer to the 1954 or 1958 World Cups as landmark testaments of their purported greatness, on top of what they achieved in general with the national team and at club level with Kaiserslautern/Botafogo. In comparison, Wilkes is much harder to pin down as he has 0 World Cup participations and 1 Olympic participation (where he scored 3 goals but was eliminated in Round 1), so forming a semi-rigorous opinion is an impractical endeavor. Ditto other enigmatic figures from that era or before like Rijvers, Smit, van Heel...as well as Lenstra, yes.Yeah, there is a strong 90s-to-now bias in the thread - and even the posters that do go further back kinda stop at the 70s WC teams. Moulijn and Wilkes are huge historically, although that starts taking you into generations where you really can't compare to later players anymore. Abe Lenstra would be another one from the pre-70s.
Interestingly, he is still their highest scorer in the World Cup competitions.Apologies if he’s already been mentioned on this thread, but I just don’t see it, but Johnny Rep deserves a huge shout on this thread.
Apart from the magnificent name, he was magnificent on the pitch, a footballer who would easily be in the 5 footballers on the planet today. But with so many others being so brilliant, it’s understandably why Rep has been forgotten or never heard of.
For what reason?I think Jordi Cruyff should be up there
Yeah, you're totally right - and I should have added that I could not do any better myself. In fact, I would do much worse. I mean, I know that a line-up that features no pre-90s players in defence is clearly incomplete, as someone like Blind is not one of NL's best defenders ever (especially not if played anywhere outside CB), but I don't know myself what the actual best defence would be. I'm just a lazy armchair critic of knowledgeable armchair critics, really.In fairness, a lot of us don't know where to place someone like Wilkes in the pantheon of greats (partly because of a lack of footage as he is featured only twice in the grainy footballia archive base), despite having him in back of our minds because of the narratives surrounding him. With the likes of Walter for Germany or Didi for Brazil, you can at least refer to the 1954 or 1958 World Cups as landmark testaments of their purported greatness, on top of what they achieved in general with the national team and at club level with Kaiserslautern/Botafogo. In comparison, Wilkes is much harder to pin down as he has 0 World Cup participations and 1 Olympic participation (where he scored 3 goals but was eliminated in Round 1), so forming a semi-rigorous opinion is an impractical endeavor . Ditto other enigmatic figures from that era or before like Rijvers, Smit, van Heel...as well as Lenstra, yes.
I'm not trying to be rude or disagree with the selection at all and love it (specially as I grew up in Holland in the 80's / 90's and those players were my idols!), but you're missing a huge number of players from '74 & '78 when they got to the WC finals and - bit like if we were to do the Brazil all time XI there would be a lot of posters would put Cafe / Ronaldinho etc in it and not really knowing the names of the players who won the WC in the 60's and 70's. But then I wouldn't be doing research into players of 74 & 78 etc either
My only adjustment if I were to stick to your near XI I would change Rijkaard was a very quick / strong aggresive holding midfielder in his prime and only turned defender in his late age, hence I'd put Stam in over Rijkaard (phyiscal and very pacey), Crujiff out to left wing and put in Bergkamp behind MVB
But I'd happily put your team out against any other in the world and be confident
Glad van Hanegem mentioned.Honorable mentions (probably in that order): Ronald Koeman, Edgar Davids, Edwin van der Sar, Clarence Seedorf, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Jaap Stam, Robin van Persie
- Johan Cruyff — there's not even an option of picking anyone else for the first place
- Marco van Basten — it's possible that van Basten without his health issues would've been able to try to overcome Cruyff, but that didn't happen
- Ruud Gullit — probably the most all-rounded player of all-time; just yesterday I was watching him playing as a libero in 1986!
- Frank Rijkaard — one of the greatest midfielders of all-time, I'd put him somewhere close to Xavi and Matthäus (although their styles are very different, mind)
- Johan Neeskens — one of the greatest midfielders of all-time, overshadowed by Johan the First
- Arjen Robben — one save away from moving to 4th or so
- Rob Rensenbrink — a few centimetres away from moving to 4th or so
- Denis Bergkamp — simply magical, but something was missing
- Wim van Hanegem — perhaps unfairly overshadowed by his contemporaries from Ajax
- Ruud Krol — maybe deserves a place a little higher, but the public perception is always unfair to defenders
I doubt that van Dijk will be able to get into top-10, but when he'll retire he'll probably end up in the honorable mentions list.