ZZ still top of the pile

I may be a couple of days late, but I’d like to say a big happy birthday to one Edson Arantes do Nascimento - or Pele as most of us know him.


The great man celebrated his 70th birthday at the weekend, and presumably friends and family of the Brazilian superstar were forced to sit with him through footage of all 1,124 of his career goals.


Thought by many to be the world’s greatest ever player, Pele also remains the game’s most iconic figure; 52 years after he lit up the 1958 World Cup in Sweden as a precocious 17 year-old. His name is synonymous with football: he transcends generations; inspiring some of the game’s emerging stars even now - despite retiring well before they were born. Heck, even Americans have known who he is for over 30 years now.


Yet although there can be little doubt that both his name and face is the most well known in the football world, can he still be considered the game’s greatest ever player? In short, my opinion is no.


I’ll tell you for why: there is often much discussion about which players would form a world XI, and who would take the crown as the best player of all time. Often enough - and professional footballers are guilty of this even - people fill their hall of fame with stars they have never even seen play live; who retired before they can remember watching football; and who they only know from a few hazy clips on their Dad’s old VHS cassettes.


To really judge a footballer, you have to have seen them play on numerous occasions and facing various situations: leading their team to an emphatic victory against well-fancied opponents; inspiring their team-mates to a heroic win against the odds; dazzling fans with breathtaking skill in a do or die cup final. Simply viewing a montage of goals on Youtube does not mean you can compare a player from yesteryear to one from today.


For most of us, the greatest player of all time is in actual fact, the greatest player of our generation. At 28, I’m too young to have seen the likes of Cruyff, Platini and even Maradona in their pomp. Even Pele himself is someone I mainly know from either erectile dysfunction treatment advertisements, or as the crazy old fool who makes wild predictions about some also-ran winning the World Cup every four years.


No, I can only really judge players I have seen extensively in the years I have followed football, and for that reason I believe the world’s greatest player to be Zinedine Zidane. A Champions League and league title winner at club level, he translated his domestic success to the international stage to win both the World Cup and European Championships with France. He played at the highest level, and won all there was to win - even taking the 2006 World Cup player of the tournament accolade despite headbutting Marco Matterazzi in the final.


I had the pleasure of watching him in the flesh twice: first for France at Wembley in 1999, and second for Real Madrid at the Bernabeu in 2003. That night at Wembley over 10 years ago now, I was completely mesmerised. Less than a year after he had inspired Les Bleus to their first ever World Cup triumph, he effortlessly destroyed England with his passing, movement and quick thinking. He was a step, sometimes two, ahead of England that night and it was the only time I have ever enjoyed seeing my country get completely torn apart. We lost 2-0, but many of us in the crowd that night went home knowing we had witnessed a truly remarkable performance.


The second time I saw Zizou in action was on a trip to Madrid to watch Los Galacticos crush a very capable Athletic Bilbao side 3-0. Beckham; Carlos; Casillas; Figo; Raul; Ronaldo; all the headline acts were on stage, but it was the prematurely balding number five that stole the show once again. Whenever and wherever he got the ball, he somehow managed to create 10 yards of space; allowing himself to play any pass he liked, or as he chose to do at one point, run half the length of the field before crossing to Ronaldo. Once again he dictated play throughout, and none of the star names on the Real Madrid team sheet that night performed anywhere near as impressively as Zidane.


It’s hard to remember him giving the ball away in either of those two matches, and it’s even more difficult to think of a player currently playing who comes close to the level of genius that Zidane reached so regularly. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are wonderfully exciting players to watch, whilst Wesley Sneijder has an exquisite range of passing. But for me, there is still some distance for them to travel before they can be spoken of in the same breath as the greatest of them all: Zinedine Zidane.


What do you think? Is Zidane the greatest player of all time?