He was too late unfortunately but would definitely have a good case somewhere I'm not quite sure right now.

Overall the 200-101 is quite a mess and ever changing and everyone has a case over everyone almost, like predicted already in the introduction.

But like it was also the plan, at least it produced a helluva lot of text about tons of players and with all the shared rankings even more than planned.


In my roundup of the 200-101 I'll post the best players/biggest mistakes who didn't make it. Bale will definitely be on that.

Suarez made the top 100! Can't go wrong from now on

The confusing thing in particular is that these players ranked like this in the new order attempt:

153: Sergio Busquets - Barcelona - Spain
152: Pepe - Real Madrid - Portugal
151: Pedro - Barcelona - Spain
150: Arda Turan - Galatasaray - Turkey
149: Sergio Ramos - Real Madrid - Spain
148: Marouane Fellaini - Everton - Belgium

all to various extents, and especially the last two, should be ranked ahead of many of the players who followed. There is still no one I'd put ahead of Fellaini and it might just be a while yet before there is one. Maybe not until around top 50.

Bjorn this is awesome. How many hours ya log watching soccer a week? Amazing detailed and broad knowledge. Ask me about being a soccer junkie thread?

Scottish?

Thank you.

Watch a shameful amount, especially the last couple of seasons with following/adding quite a few different leagues. There will probably be a burnout at some point but it will just have to wait until after the World Cup which is the greatest thing ever.

Oops. Corrected.

Red means too low. Green means too high. Numerically. IMO. Hope you don't mind I understand the difficulty of compiling such a list as everything changes and the sheer scale of it makes it meaningless outside large brackets of ability until you get very near the top of the list. I also don't undersatand joint entries. Top 200 players mean top 200 no? Not top 220 or whatever? Its not like Iniesta/Xavi where I can imagine why you would include them joint either. If two people are joint 2nd that means the next person is 4th....

@Ra:

You are using high and low literally? Because the highest on a list should mean #1 imo, despite the fact that this one happens to go from worst to best for.. excitement purposes.

I assume you're not saying that Fellaini shouldn't be in the top 180 while Demichelis should, if that is in fact what you mean then ignore this post.

It's good. The more critique the better.

If there is still interest I could see people go almost berserk at some of the order once we get to the higher ranks where people mostly will have stronger opinions on players. I'm definitely aware my views differ quite a lot from the norm sometimes. That (also) means mistakes but all in all hopefully it will help make the list more interesting (not the mistakes but the originality!)

If it's going to get in any way predictable it will only be to people here having read some of my views on various players many times already... But there should be many surprising rankings.

I don't like the shared rankings either but as I realized more and more that there wasn't much difference between a lot of these players, and not least as more and more names I forgot to include surfaced, I just thought that all in all the list would have been been more incomplete without them. It also meant more thoughts on more players (hooray).

I tried really hard to keep them out of the top 100 though but there is just one more to go, one I could imagine you in particular will find distasteful, somewhere in the 90s....

Kroos is clearly not that good just yet

he is on the same level as Wilshere who didnt even make the top200

I meant red were overrated green were underrated. Its confusing alright saying high to low when the highest is actually the lowest number imo.

Kroos was very good this season, I definitely would rank him below people like Marin though

having one good season(not even really special season) in Germany guarantees to be ranked above guys like Sagna, Pique, Giggs, Barry or Young?

Im sorry but no, Kroos hasnt really shown much more than Wilshere so far and talent wise they are very similiar as well

In the past I remember being underwhelmed by Wilshere compared to for an example Ramsey, but yeah this season he has been very good, and had I discovered that earlier, he might just have been included.

Kroos I guess is one of the more unproven players on the list, there will be many more to come, but they all have in common that I've chosen to rate what I think I see in their current ability (not potential) higher than various, to whatever extent, worse more proven players (including as already gone over not least a lot of primarily defenders).

Of course being unproven doesn't help and has hurt all of these people's rankings or they would have been even higher, just as long as I see enough ability.

Maybe Fabregas who I've seen as an elite player since he was 16-17 basically, is the best example, and perhaps would have cracked say my top 20 already then, after seeing just very few games with him really.

I'm not saying Kroos is Fabregas, or he would have been much higher, but to a lesser extent how I rated Fabregas then also comes into play with several, more or less only proven -that excellent- to me, young players on the list now.

cliffnotes: he has shown me! for good and worse, the essential thing on this list...

EDIT:

On another note, thanks to Tuq, the OP has now been updated with the 200-101 ranks+writeups. Including the latest roundup entry that I've been updating the last few hours with some limited thoughts on various players that didn't make the list.

edit2: now including Wilshere

Interesting list of players who missed out. Although there seems one noticeable absentee.



*I hope he's still to come.*

He is definitely still to come.

Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves with Wilshere (standard for Arse fans, I know)? 29 appearances, 2 goals, 2 assists...that makes him one of the best 200 footballers in the world? He might have the ability to be great one day, but he hasn't proven a thing, and belongs nowhere near this list...yet.

imo

Yeah I did think that he had played more games for Bolton

which is the reason why Kroos is way too high

maybe, but he has more of a claim given that he was a key contributor to a team that finished 4th in a strong league. 9 league goals in 33 appearances is much better. haven't seen him play much, if at all, so i can't say any more than this.

unless i'm missing the intent of this list, and it's partially or fully meant to be a projection, rather than an account of results (couldn't come up with a more graceful way to put that, lol).

Might've been easier if you made like a top 20 list by position (CB's/FB's/DM's/CM's/Strikers or any type of breakdown) would eliminate some of the controversies.

(A good striker will almost always be applauded more than a good defender for instance etc...)

But i still really like the work you're doing, so keep it up!

Kroos is a very inconsistent worldclass talent who is playing on a pretty high level already, same as Wilshere.

There just isnt much difference between the two at all and wilshere prolly would have reached very similiar stats in the Bundesliga for a very strong Bundesliga side which is dominating teams on regular basis and therefore makes it A LOT easier to create goals.

I never said Wilshere has to be in this top200 list(lol standard 72 reading comprehension fail) but If Kroos is in at 100, Wilshere not being in makes no sense

Just reading the near misses list now and noticed you mentioned Nani. The other day when I was guessing at how many United players were still to come I think I hinted at Nani being someone who could have been in the 100-200 range but was probably left off because of his early season, which like you say is what happened.

hmm... interesting, I don't disagree with you wrt to Essien, but for Song his lack of acceleration means he isn't running around the pitch like a maniac. He knows his role and he is incredibly consistent with it. He also uses his body exceptionally well to shrug attacking players off the ball. So basically I think he brings a lot more stability to a teams midfield than someone like Mascherano does. For that reason I would take him over Mascherano, but I suspect I may be in the minority here and I also expect him to be ahead of Song in this list. I think for someone with as much energy as Mascherano, he needs to be adding more to the attack, but if he isn't then he needs to real in his energy and be more of a rock defensively. Essien is a good example of that, he's a box to box guy that can join in on the attack from time to time, but thats partly due to Chelsea's MF being pretty dynamic and able to cover for him.

I think Song's lack of acceleration is mainly a hindrance defending the counter-attack, which for a team which plays Arsenal's style, is an important (though not fatal) flaw.