doubt it
german grammar is very tough and not really similiar to english so i dont see why americans would have an advantage

btw bjoern i dont agree with the barnetta rating at all
he is a good overall player in the bundesliga but not even special there, no way he is better than the likes of Walcott, SWP, Pedro etc

Understanding German or even speaking it well enough to have someone understand you is easy (for Dutch people anyway), but getting the grammar correct is very tough.

Hey we're getting closer and closer to the good players!

Meanwhile I continue to tinker with the placements. Very little is set. At least when there aren't big gaps involved and even top 10 (even top 5 actually) has seen some change of mind lately.

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 Munich - 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: Klaas Jan Huntelaar - AC Milan - The Netherlands
173: William Gallas - Arsenal - France
172: Shaun Wright Phillips - Manchester City - England
171: Pavel Pogrebnyak - VBF Stuttgart - Russia
170: Darijo Srna - Shakhtar Donetsk - Croatia
169: Bojan Krkic and Pedro - Barcelona - Spain
168: Ronaldinho - AC Milan - Brazil
167: Tranquillo Barnetta - Bayer Leverkusen - Switzerland

And here is the: 166-163 featuring a couple of guys with seemingly very bad seasons so far.

Interestingly the next update will feature a couple of EPL mid/bottom table players, which I'm not sure will happen again.

Speaking of EPL players Tom Huddlestone is just one player who I at this point would really like to replace Mikel with, but there are probably many more if I think about it, but Huddlestone was one that I unfortunately didn't even nominate.
Actually now that I think about it, Jack Rodwell who Hoopie1 brought up earlier itt would be another good replacement candidate.

Appreciating the great thread bjorn. Ronny still ****s on every player in the world! -_-

+1.

Hah, if only you had done this list earlier and quicker you could have had all your favourite Juve players so much higher up the list.

Good list so far... I would put Lucio and Sergio Ramos higher up in the list and the younger guys lower.

i'm all for the inclusion of Stilian Petrov but he was never a left-winger for Celtic and he's not left-footed either. are you half confusing him with Martin Petrov?

thought the same

I rate Alves quite highly
looked beasty in every game vs us

lol oops

Well I'm aware that they're different people haha but for some reason I have memories of Stan terrorizing the wing for Celtic (at least I got to put it in there that I didn't see him much). I guess it's just imagination.

I suppose maybe the other Petrov could have something to do with me thinking it was the left, though I clearly remember him playing for Atletico and not Celtic! Strange. Hmm maybe just maybe at some point when seeing Martin for Atletico (while not paying attention to what's going on at Celtic) I've wrongly thought it was the same Petrov, who had now (not least because of his excellent wing play for Celtic!) switched to a big Spanish team.

But thanks for pointing out a factual mistake. The order and who is included and who is not will definitely have its fair share of mistakes but hopefully there won't be too many factual ones...

*goes to edit*

i think he was forced out on the right of midfield for a brief spell as we switched from 352 to 442 but he spent almost all his career at Celtic as a centre mid of some variation. i guess you just got your wires crossed slightly which is easily done when writing about 200+ players.

Haha yeah some have taken some serious hits.

Leaving out Del Piero hurt. I had him around where we're getting to now originally but when really trying to look at it objectively I just couldn't put a 35 year old striker in who've barely played this season.

Following an excellent start to last season he faded towards the end there somewhat too.

But a few players who I originally stated didn't make it have since found their way in. Seedorf, Montolivo (who I now would have liked to have put even higher) and Ronaldinho I've gotten to already, but there are at least a couple more who (with their current good ranking in mind) I think more than the others would have been terrible to leave out.

uist,

Was the 3-5-2 played during MON's time at the club? Was it the regular formation or just tried out for a bit?

If you had to compare MON's Celtic to MON's Villa, playing stylewise how similar are they?

Great thread Bjorn, excellent writeups aswell.

we played a 352 under from MON's arrival in 2000 until roughly 2003. we generally had 3 big strong centre-backs, two wing-backs, two generally defensive-minded centre-mids, and Petrov as an attacking midfielder who would make runs beyond the two strikers (Sutton and Larsson). This was hugely succesful for us in that we won two league titles and reached the UEFA Cup final in 2003.

Unfortunately though, Rangers and other clubs started to play a 433 with two pacy wingers against us which exploited and stretched our 3 at the back. So, eventually, we changed to a 442 at the start of the 2003 season and that was the catalyst for us beating Rangers 7 games in a row, winning the league and reaching the QF of the UEFA Cup in 2004 (knocking out Barca en route).

wrt the similarities between his Celtic and Villa teams - they are very similar. both are physical, combative, hard-working, accomodate no passengers and generally have a very Northern European approach to the game. he instilled a winning mentality at Celtic which lead to us going from being 20 odd points behind Rangers in 99-00 to being 20 odd points ahead of them the following season (his first); an overnight success if you will. at Villa, you can see the same winning mentality in the players, and hopefully this will translate into success of some sort.

I can only say that he has been very frustrating for us Swiss fans in the last 4 years. Given what he showed at a really young age in the German WC we expected a lot more from him than what he has actually delivered since then. Still he has been really consistent with Bayer Leverkusen in the last few seasons and this pretty much assures him a guaranteed spot in the Swiss National team. I personally think that Dzemaili of Parma is showing a much higher long term potential than him, now that he has left behind him the serious injury suffered a while ago and is playing for a side not as problematic as Torino last year.
List looks good although Busquets and Walcott would make my top100.

i should add that 352 was also his default formation at Leicester before he came to us. I should also add that I see him more of a man-manager and motivator than an excellent coach per se. having said that, he has his own coaching team with him and presumably they play a large part in his teams' success. finally, it is clear that he has a very defined idea of the players he likes to sign - they are generally tall, strong and often British.

Did he also use the same big man/small man strike partnership with fast wingers, with a lot of long balls played to the target man and/or behind the defense for the wingers to run on to and cross into the box?

yeah, we usually had Larsson and Sutton/Hartson in attack, and in the wide areas we usually had Alan Thompson who wasn't a fantastic dribbler, nor was he particularly quick, but who was a fantastic crosser; and Didier Agathe who was lightning quick and who could either knock it past the full back or receive passes in behind the full back. when we played the 352 it gave Petrov the license to get beyoned the strikers, so often times we'd play it directly into a big striker, Petrov would make a run beyond him and the defenders, and the striker would play it through. I guess the last bit isn't wholly relevant to the Celtic/Villa comparison.

we played a very direct style generally; feeding the ball to the target man and playing off him. at the same time though, once we got the ball in the final third and we got players in support, we could actually play quite attractive football. but the focus was primarily on getting it forward quickly and playing from there.

Okay I did some quick counting and it's probably with a mistake or two BUT, some close to accurate results right here:

Players on the list playing in:

EPL: 59

LA Liga: 43 (It feels low when you compare to EPL and Serie A but they do crush when it comes to top 20, 50 and 100 too I think, where they have the most players)

Serie A: 44 (There probably is unintentional favoritism when it comes to some of the lower inclusions over people from some other leagues based on watching more midtable Serie A teams than mid La Liga, Bundesliga and France teams, but they are clearly behind La Liga and EPL when it comes to the top ranks.)

Bundesliga: 23

Ligue 1: 12 (again this feels too low but they're suffering a bit from some very talented people that I just haven't seen enough like Sissoko from Toulouse and then there were a few others like Ben Arfa and Gomis who have been struggling a little bit too much and were late cuts. Also, none of these 12 have even appeared yet.)

Players on the list from:

Brazil: 19 (Low number when compared to the Europeans but if it's top 400 and of course upwards they'd pull away from the field)

Italy: 17 (A lot of people think the national team has been terrible so this must be way too high right? WELL... Something like half of these aren't even playing on that team regularly!)


France:16 (see the Ligue 1 comments and to those I'll add Flamini who is easily talented enough but just isn't playing atm. A lot of candidates also seems like they're defenders (and goalkeepers for that matter) where a lot people were cut)

Germany: 12 (This really surprised me and it seems very low. When it comes to defenders they're in the same boat as France though and virtually no one made it. All in all I do feel like I have a good representation of their midfielders and forwards where some are ranked pretty high, though of course there will be people who you could easily make a case for in the lower placements)

Argentina: 18

Spain: 26 (The big winner and World Cup favorites!)

England: 19 (Don't like the number compared to Brazil and Argentina or Germany for that matter but remove Walcott and it's at least one less! And like I said in relation to Brazil, all the European nations would start falling behind once we went deeper. England too of course)

And I need to count Africa.

63 from Eredivisie imo

12 Germans:

Schweinsteiger
Özil
Ballack
Trochowski
Gomez
Klose
Podolski
Kießling
Marin
Mertesäcker
Lahm
Adler

Heh not bad at all but also not quite!

At least Adler is replaced by someone to be exact.

Müller and Kroos may have been made your list as well.

I really hope Podolski isn't on the list, but I'm quite sure that he is