Assessing the 1990s

It is a quirk of history that some footballers are cherished whilst others are somewhat overlooked. To help prove this point, admittedly from a limited sample, I asked on Twitter and Facebook a simple question ''who were the best five players of the 1990s?

The same names came up on both networking sites. The response was enormous (I suppose that's down to my age and the age of most of my friends. The 1990s were when we began to appreciate football in a wider sense.

Firstly, which decade does a given player belong to? Would, say, Rijkaard count as a 1980s player or a 1990s player? Or Baresi? Or Matthaus? Would Zidane and Nedved count as 2000s players? Would Michael Owen count as a 1990s player for that golden summer in 1998 or a 2000s player because of his Ballon d'Or?

Secondly, do you forgive someone not being at their best in a given decade if we know that they are one of the all-time greats? Diego Maradona is, surely, the best player who played during the 1990s but I'm not sure he sang so sweetly after he left Napoli in 1991.

Thirdly, what role does sentimentality play? One commenter said Robbie Fowler (in fact, he just repeated it five times). Another - a Southampton fan - said Matthew Le Tissier. Do you have to have seen the player in the flesh? Or does a few glimpses on Football Italia count? If an individual saw - say - Robbie Fowler play 50 times live does that mean rather more than someone suggesting Dunga on the back of a few TV appearances?

Fourthly, we can stray dangerously close to Haydn and the oyster: do we go for sustained excellence over the entire decade (acknowledging the first point above that players don't fit neatly)? Do we accept a few glorious years or do we live on moments a given player gave us? Does Gascoigne's goal against Scotland trump a decade of excellent play? Do we prefer Baggio's excellent performances in the 1994 World Cup (bar the last kick in the Final) to Zidane's suspensions and sub-par performances in the build up but astonishing performance in the final? Does Keane's semi-final against Juventus beat Schmeical's consistent excellence?

I'm grateful to the many people who got contributed. Each will have voted for their own reasons.

The names were as you'd expect. The top five were: Baggio, Ronaldo, Romario, Maldini, Stoichkov and Zidane (actually six as Zidane and Stoichkov had the same number of votes). The individual with the most total votes was Roberto Baggio (my thoughts on him here).

Numerous others got a handful of votes: Dunga, Batistuta, Sammer, Bergkamp, Schemical (the only keeper nominated), Baresi, Hagi, Gascoigne, van Basten, Figo, Nedved, Keane, Weah, Gullitt, Cantona, Maradona, and Rivaldo.

And a number again got one vote each: Prosinecki, Papin, Rijkaard, Cafu, Redondo, Klinsmann, Möller, Viera, Seedorf, Petit, Fowler, Le Tissier, Davids, Shearer, Rui Costa, Hierro, Del Piero, Le Tissier, Milla, Yeboah, Valderama, Beardsley, and Litmanen.

There were a few other suggestions (Michael Gray, Efan Ekoku, Daniel Amokachi, and Jackie McNamara) that I decided not to take totally seriously but thought I'd include for completeness.It was a vintage decade in terms of depth of quality but perhaps no player sparkled as brightly as preceding or succeeding generations. As fine as Baggio was he isn't, quite, in the Messi, Puskas, Pele, Cruijff, or Maradona category. What it was, however, was the first decade where many British viewers saw overseas football on a regular basis - hence, I think, the huge number of names put forward.

The reason I asked the question was simple but the breadth and depth of the response has put my original idea off track. The reason I asked was: How many people would put forward Jari Litmanen?

As he never got the chance to play at an international tournament, he doesn't resonate in the collective memory as obviously as Baggio or Zidane. It didn't help that he played for Ajax who didn't feature so prominently after 1996 and who didn't feature, say, on Football Italia. We just didn't see as much of him.

He was, however, an astonishing player, a truly brilliant one. The fulcrum of that wonderful Ajax team of the mid-1990s and a joy to watch throughout his career. His injury problems at Ajax and Barcelona robbed us of much of the peak of his career although he continued to twinkle until his retirement a couple of years back. Wayne Rooney was right to model his game on this genius and he was right to note his movement and exploitation of space. We Liverpool fans got him five years too late and, sadly, we had no idea how to get the best of him. 
Ajax has produced many of the greats of the game. They rate three players above all others - Cruijff, van Basten, and Litmanen. The fact that Litmanen is ranked ahead of Bergkamp, Suarez, Overmars, Keizer, Swart, Sneijder, Krol, and Neeskens should speak volumes.



He was, after Baggio, the first name in my list. He'd have been followed by Stoichkov, Hagi, and Maldini.

Alas, alas.

RCM