Football Month: The Top 10 Players from My Lifetime

Greetings, reader!

Welcome to yet another theme month, where I divert from my usual movie/TV themes to discuss other topics that I'm passionate about. I've already done a theme month on literature and another on music, and for July 2022, this blog of mine will be all about the world of football (or 'soccer' for my American relatives). I've never been the world's greatest sportsman, to put it mildly, but this particular sport has had a huge place in my heart ever since I saw Barcelona play Valladolid at Camp Nou on our family trip to Spain in 2008.

For today's list, I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible, as I rank the 10 greatest players from my lifetime (or, to be fair, from the time that I've actively followed football, a.k.a. from 2008 to present day). Next week's list will be an extremely subjective look at my all-time favorite players, so today's list is about the ones I consider to be the best, whether I like them or not. The ranking is based on a mixture of many different factors: how good the player is in their position, technical skills and understanding of the game, role in the team, longevity of one's career but also how good they've been at their prime, et cetera. These are the ten greatest players from the time that I have followed football.

Here are my honorable mentions: Eden Hazard, Frank Lampard, Iker Casillas, Kevin De Bruyne, Kylian Mbappe, Philipp Lahm.

10. Manuel Neuer

The longtime goalkeeper of Bayern Munich and the German national team is in my opinion the greatest keeper of the last ten years or so. Casillas comes close, and Buffon would probably be on this list if it weren't for the fact that he was starting to be a bit past his prime (though still spectacularly good) when I started to follow the sport. With Neuer, it's hard to identify a 'prime' in his career, as he has been pure gold for as long as I can remember.

His reaction speed in stopping shots is insane, as is his stretching ability and the firmness of his hands when catching the ball. He's also a magnificent leading figure, having been a successful captain for club and country for a long time. Perhaps the most impressive facet of his playing is the way in which he has perfected the 'sweeper keeper' role: Neuer is so incredibly talented in knowing when to prevent an opponent's attack by coming out of the box for an early clearance, that you'd think him to be an outfield player as he's so solid on his feet (and with his head, if need be).

9. Neymar

This Brazilian icon was difficult to rank, as many would put him significantly higher and with good reason: when talking purely about dribbling and overall technical skill, Neymar is probably the greatest I've witnessed right after Ronaldo and Messi. But football is more than dribbling and technical skill, and there are a few factors that put Neymar a tad below some of the more underrated talents of his generation.

Number one, inconsistency. There are some players who seem to always deliver when their team needs them, but Neymar has quite often ghosted in major games especially in his professional career - his greatest seasons and games with FC Barcelona and PSG have been the stuff of legends, but he definitely has his share of underwhelming performances. Number two, selfishness. Being a good team player is an important part of being a footballing great, and this has always been Neymar's weakness - very often he takes the shot himself in situations where making a key pass would be the smarter move. His inconsistency and selfish style of play are why he's only ninth, but he still makes it into the top 10 due to his stunning ability with the ball and the incredible work he has done on his best days.

8. Luka Modric

This Croatian midfield maestro is the only player besides Ronaldo and Messi who has won the Ballon D'Or ever since the first of the GOATs won the award in 2008 - that's right, ever since 2008, the award has always gone to either Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, with the sole exception of Modric's well-deserved win in 2018. Winning the Ballon D'Or in their era is like winning the U.S. Presidential election as a third-party candidate running against the Democratic and Republican nominees - it's a miraculous feat.

When you look at his club career, Modric has dominated Real Madrid's midfield together with Casemiro and Toni Kroos for years, including the remarkable 'three-peat' as Madrid won the Champions League for three seasons in a row from 2016 to 2018. His international career is less decorated in terms of trophies, but even more impressive when considering the quality of the team: in Madrid, he's surrounded by world class talents, but with Croatia, there's no way in hell that the country would've made it all the way to the 2018 World Cup Final if it wasn't for Modric being the man of the match in every single match (it says something that he won the Player of the Tournament award, even though he didn't play for the winning team).

And then there's his longevity - Modric broke through at a young age, and now at an age of 36 years, he's still going strong. The dude is older than long-retired players like Wayne Rooney, but as we witnessed in last season's Champions League knockout stage, he can still dominate a midfield with a brilliant and unstoppable energy.

7. Virgil Van Dijk

Yes, I am a proud Liverpool fan, and therefore will face accusations of being biased if any supporters of other clubs read this post. But I disagree - a big part of me wanted to put Big Virg even higher, and 7th place is the best I can do when I try to be as objective as possible. He's the only centre-back who made it to my all-time top ten, as I've simply never seen a footballer play defense as magically as him. Sergio Ramos, Giorgio Chiellini and Thiago Silva are amazing centre-backs from my lifetime and they were all close to making my list, but none of them have been as rock-solid in their prime as this Netherlands captain.

Now it might seem over-the-top to put him ahead of such legendary names, as his rise to the top is fairly recent and football fans tend to over-emphasize older players due to historical and nostalgic value, but mark my words: ten or twenty years from now, most football fans will se Virgil Van Dijk as the best defender of his generation.

With his perfectly timed slide tackles, extremely physical yet rarely foul-committing style of defending, shocking aerial ability and crazy amount of successful interceptions, blocks and clearances made in each game, Van Dijk has turned defending into a form of art more than any other player from my lifetime. Watching him stop attacks and put the ball back into play with strategic long passes is a thing of beauty, and I'm not just saying that as a Liverpool fan - if he played for any other club, I'd be terrified and pessimistic each time my favorite club and their poor attackers would have to face him.

6. Mohamed Salah

Yes, I know, 'Liverpool bias' et cetera. In my defense, is it so preposterous to include two players from a team that has under the Jürgen Klopp era been one of the most successful teams in the past decade??

Anyways, there's no denying that Salah has been among the world's very best and most consistent attacking players ever since the 2017-18 season. What really sets him apart is how much of a 'full package' forward he is: most of the very best forwards are either the ones whose greatest strength is dribbling and building situations while their finishing isn't quite in the top tier (Eden Hazard and Neymar, to name a few), or the ones who aren't elite-level dribblers and creators but who specifically are on the top due to their clinical finishing (Karim Benzema and Erling Haaland, for instance).

But Salah does both with the highest quality - his dribbling is on par with prime Hazard, while his finishing parallels that of Benzema. Everything that one might look for in a forward can be found in Salah, which is why he has been consistently topping statistics and breaking records for the past five years.

5. Andres Iniesta

Naturally, a few players from the Spain team that won back-to-back European Championships and a World Cup in between them were going to make the cut - from 2008 to 2012, this Spain side was unstoppable. And while their defense and attack did play an admittedly big part, there's no getting around the fact that the midfield was the biggest individual factor to this team's success. The trio of Sergio Busquets, Xavi and Andres Iniesta dominated football for a good chunk of time both in their shared club FC Barcelona and this national team, and have thus engrained themselves as one of the best midfields in football history.

Iniesta was the most attacking of the trio, as his creation of situations seemed to be behind pretty much all goals scored (except for the ones scored by himself, which made for a good amount considering that he's a midfield player). Nicknamed 'The Mailman' due to his ability to always deliver with an incredible work rate, Iniesta had an understanding of the game that has rarely been seen since, always knowing exactly where to put the ball. And never was he better than in the biggest games where his skills were most needed, as witnessed by his Man-Of-The-Match awards from both the EURO2012 final and the 2015 Champions League final, as well as his winning 1-0 goal in the 2010 World Cup final.

4. Robert Lewandowski

When a dude comes onto the pitch in a Bundesliga match that is level at half-time, and proceeds to score five goals in nine minutes, you know you've got a footballing legend in your hands.

No, really. Five goals in nine minutes.

I could go on and on about Lewandowski's razor-sharp finishing, and his incredible stamina, not to mention how the fact that he didn't win the Ballon D'Or in 2020 or 2021 is perhaps the biggest injustice in modern football. But really, do I have to say any more than those five words? FIVE. GOALS. IN. NINE. MINUTES.

With almost anything else, you could argue that an individual moment of greatness isn't enough to justify seeing a player as the fourth-best in your lifetime. And trust me, there's a lot more I could say to justify the Polish maestro being this high on my list - I just choose to focus on this one achievement that says it all. Just think of the skill required to pull that off, especially in a league as prestigious as the Bundesliga against a quality team like Wolfsburg.

Five goals in nine minutes, man.

3. Xavi

Midfield play doesn't come any better than this. The phrase "If you look at the game, you don't see [INSERT PLAYER HERE], but if you look at [THE SAME PLAYER], you see the whole game" gets thrown a lot when discussing important-but-not-flashy midfield players, but it fits this Barcelona&Spain legend better than anyone else. Back in the days of that golden Busquets-Xavi-Iniesta midfield, everything went through Xavi, who was the essential building block of the team with his genius passing play.

He controlled the tempo, put every ball right where it needed to be, and I don't think I ever saw him make a downright mistake or bad pass across all the international and club competitions that I followed him in. Passing is an integral part of football, and no one in my lifetime has mastered that skill quite as fully and completely as Xavi.

2. Cristiano Ronaldo

I'm certainly on one side of the polarizing effect that CR7's somewhat arrogant and diva-like presence has caused in football fans, which is why you won't find him on next week's list of my all-time favorite players. But when looking at talent, you can't disagree with Ronaldo's status as one of the all-time greats.

When I started following football on some level in 2008, Portugal and Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo was one of the biggest names in world football. In the fourteen years since, new stars have emerged and faded and the world stage has thoroughly changed - yet in 2022, Portugal and Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo remains one of the Premier League's brightest stars at the brisk age of 37 years. Of course, in between, he made himself into a Real Madrid legend, a Juventus record-breaker, and an UEFA European Championship winner (not to mention the hefty amount of five Ballon D'Or awards). With his top notch work rate, astonishing footwork and magnificent consistency, CR7 is quite simply different gravy.

1. Lionel Messi

If you're wondering why I have Messi ahead of Ronaldo, as those two were always going to be the top 2 but their order can be debated, it all boils down to one key difference. In terms of footballing ability, Cristiano Ronaldo is in many ways the 'perfect human being', built to succeed with perfection in the sport - when you watch him play, he seems like the perfect human specimen in terms of football playing, as if he had been created in a laboratory for that very purpose.

But when you watch Messi play, he doesn't seem human at all. He seems like an alien who came from a higher plain of existence, to do things in the world of football that no mortal human could accomplish.

To put it another way, Ronaldo's brand of greatness is similar to many of the other top-tier football talents, but just more consistent: when you look at his greatest goals and best games, they are achievements that Lewandowski or Neymar could've also accomplished, but they just don't do it as regularly as Ronaldo. But when you look at Messi's greatest goals and best games, they are feats that you couldn't imagine any other human being accomplishing. His footwork, understanding of the game, leadership on the pitch, creating of situations and finishing make for a spectacular and magical combination that simply cannot be beaten.

Thank you for reading! Tune in next week as Football Month continues with a list of my all-time favorite players.