If you are involved in the sport in any way, the odds are that you’ve at some point pondered the pointless question about who the greatest player of all time is. But, despite all our efforts, no consensus has been reached on this matter.
What if one asked 253 experts to pick their greatest player of all time? Who would come out on top? Lionel Messi? Pelé? Johan Cruyff, perhaps? Some candidates were raffish, frivolous. Others were pedants, even shtum. All eradicated their opposition in different ways.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s frame connotes a Leni Riefenstahl montage. Messi, the perfect footballing specimen, was probably built in a lab. Ronaldo, the Brazilian one, was, unfortunately, the prisoner of his knees. Cruyff invented the river we swim in, and modern football owes him too much. Each of these players escape definition, with mere stars lucky to ever get within seeing distance of them.
How do you even determine the value of a footballer, what metric quantifies glory? How significant are shots, passes, dribbles, and tackles compared to goals and assists, to trophies? How valuable is a stat-padding session on a farm versus a game-winner in the European Cup semi-finals? How do you count memories? Greatness hardly ever goes hand in hand with numbers and lists.