Pablo is an interesting case. He's good but unfortunately the Spanish midfield is just absurdly stacked. When the much discussed Cesc Fabregas starts more matches on the bench than on the pitch, it's going to be tough for someone like Pablo to get time. He's still young, but then most expect Xavi to be able to play forever, Iniesta is only 25, Fabregas is a lot younger and Jesus Navas is a bit younger as well. It's tough to see him break through for the national team. Valencia are pretty well off in that area is well, though we'll see what happens if they start selling their big names as most expect. It's a bit tough to compare him and Perotti because neither has played a ton of first-team football in a decent league or for the national teams.

As for Wright-Phillips, it's embarrassing because he's a big name but I don't know all that much about him. I don't think I saw him play at all when he was at Man City the first time and only this year have I actually started watching EPL matches on a regular basis. So most of my actually seeing him play is in the Champions League and for England. He's one of several guys whose writeup I'm eagerly anticipating. He seems to be very good at times, able to carve up the defense with his pace and skill, but a bit inconsistent. This could be just due to the sample size and that for me it's skewed toward very good opponents.

If I have that right then it does seem a lot like Perotti. I think he ate up Sergio Ramos, but he's also done very little against weaker sides in some matches. Both seem tough to contain when they're on.

Romaric is another guy that is frustrating because he can be a beast when he's playing well but isn't very consistent. He's apparently had some injury issues this season. Last season he came into the start of the season unfit, which I have trouble understanding. On his day he's a very good defensive midfielder who can blow up any attack. He's also more skilled with the ball and helping with scoring than most DMs.

All right, one more update today before I have to go:

The list so far:

200: Alberto Zapater - Genoa - Spain
199: Nikola Zigic - Valencia - Serbia
198: Sergio Ramos - Real Madrid - Spain
197: Lucio - Inter - Brazil
196: John Obi Mikel - Chelsea - Nigeria
195: Sergio Busquets - Barcelona - Spain
194: Philippe Mexes - Roma -France
193: Anatolij Tymoshchuk - Bayern München - Ukraine
192: Theo Walcott - Arsenal - England
191: Aaron Ramsey - Arsenal - Wales
190: Pepe - Real Madrid - Portugal
189: Sergei Semak - Rubin Kazan - Russia
188: Alberto Aquilani - Liverpool - Italy
187: Clarence Seedorf - Milan - Holland
186: Diego Capel - Sevilla - Spain
185: Yossi Benayoun - Liverpool - Israel
184: Riccardo Montolivo - Fiorentina - Italy
183: Kolo Toure - Manchester City -Côte d'Ivoire
182: Yuri Zhirkov - Chelsea - Russia
181: Martin Demichelis - Bayern Münich - Argentina
180: Marouane Fellaini - Everton - Belgium
179: Cristian Zapata - Udinese - Colombia
178: Tim Cahill - Everton - Australia
177: Paul Scholes - Manchester United - England
176: Arda Turan - Galatasaray - Turkey
175: Ezequiel Lavezzi - Napoli - Argentina
174: Klaus Jan Huntelaar - AC Milan - The Netherlands
173: William Gallas- Arsenal - France

And now:

172: Shaun Wright-Phillips - England - Manchester City



171: Pavel Pogrebnyak - Russia - VBF Stuttgart

170: Darijo Srna - Croatia - Shakhtar Donetsk

And some words on these fine players right HERE

SWP btw is another player who I've seen opinions on ranging from everything to terrible to world class. Actually a lot of English players suffer from this now that I think about it. Probably to do with the their media.

Please, its Klaas Jan Huntelaar. He is not German

I realize I come across as somewhat critical in my two posts so I think I should add that I do enjoy you making this list!

I think ranking SWP 20 places higher than Walcott is a mistake, I don't think there is much if anything between the two. I'm pretty sure neither would have made my top 200, though Walcott being 8 years younger could still improve a lot. Both suffer from inconsistency and don't contribute much to defense which means their attacking contributions have to be very good to compensate.

I can't imagine why either would be in the top 200.

Cause they are better players than those behind them

But like I said I would have liked to have removed Walcott cause he just isn't there at the moment.

SWP on the other hand is and I definitely think he adds a lot to his team with his attacking qualities (great pace and dribbling) and I also notice that he is working very hard these days for 90 minutes.
He is an important player for a potential top 4 team in likely the strongest league in the world. How bad can he be?

But obviously there are many better at his position and at contributing to the attack, which is why when it comes to wingers alone there are probably like 30 of those ranked ahead of him.

WOW, can't believe I missed this thread somehow!

great idea Bjorn...

and from the last 5 pages or so TY Jared L, awesome posts. Maybe you do know your stuff .

Thanks.

And yay I switch to the Stuttgart game for one second and there is Pogrebnyak with a great targetman type of assist doing exactly what I described he was so good at in his writeup!

You got lucky, he was pretty meh this season

I think one of the more interesting updates in a while (though I did like my Paul Scholes writeup..).

Anyway the new players are: Pedro, Bojan, Barnetta and Ronaldinho!



Thoughts and the full list can be found here

Barnetta is a good player and is good enough to make such a list imo, but I guess players who I think were better this season won't be included in your list.

Many Bundesliga players yet to come!

And would love some thoughts on Barnetta. I actually searched twoplustwo and apparently he has never been so much as mentioned in a single post on here! How about that.

But maybe that's the kind of player he is.

Pretty sure that the rankings are at the moment, and he's not factoring age into the equation. SWP without a doubt is better than Walcott atm.

This is what I would add/comment to your Barnetta writeup:

He is way better on the wing than in the centre imo. And wahat you didn't mention is that he has a good shot and can be a real danger because of it. He also has potential to become better, I have read several rumours that linked him with bigger clubs and I think he deserves that.

I've even been reading Kicker in my research!

My new worry is that I've missed out on very good midtable La Liga players. It's just not that often I watch those teams play each other or play bottom teams. It's usually against one of the big teams which usually doesn't paint a great picture.

Can you speak German? Also I am really confident that one player I rate higher in the Bundesliga on Barnetta's position this season will not be in the list. Another one might very well be.

I understand it okay.

A little better at reading it than listening to someone speak.

But I can barely write it. Your grammar is just too brutal or speak it myself without sounding like an idiot.

Yeah I heard German is hard to learn

Failed every single year

why 200???

lets talk about 10-20 but 200 it seems so odd and long

10-20 seems odd and short

200 is great because that means a bunch of players we haven't really seen but with familiar sounding names. It also means a lot of players we may like that others don't know.

I suspect Bjorn got to 200 the same way I had about that many at my wedding. If it wasn't going to be just the two of us then we had to invite 8 people. Then if we were going to invite those last few marginal people we had to invite 30. Then if those last 10 or so were getting invited we'd have to let a total of about 70 come. For several people in that tier we couldn't invite them without some other people so add about another 50. At that point it's a big enough wedding that we have to invite anybody who has ever invited us to anything so throw on another 30. **** it, now this thing is huge we might as well just let anybody we have ever met and don't dislike in.

Fortunately for all of us, especially Bjorn, he was able to cut out that last tier.

I've heard its totally dependent on ones primary language. For Americans, German is apparently easier to learn than most Latin based languages.....apparently.

Bjorn, that Ronaldinho write up was really quite enjoyable, props for that.