The 200 best players in the world: 184-182

Introduction to the list.

The list so far:

200-195
194-193
192-189
188
187-185

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

And it continues:

184:

Riccardo Montolivo - Fiorentina - Italy

Midfielder



Montolivo was difficult to place. In some ways his performances when playing at the highest level for quite a few years now have been rather disappointing. That includes when given the chance for the national team and when asked to play a leading role for Fiorentina in Europe.

On the other hand he is such a complete player that a place among the 200 best would seem rather obvious.
He is a good technical player with a very nice range of passing and he has good ball control too.
He also works hard and defends well.

Still if it had not been for some very good performances this year, in Europe too, the disappointments of previous years, despite all that nice completeness , would have kept him off the list.

With a reputation of being a complete enigma, my theory is just that Montolivo early was asked to do too much. Not that I really blame the club for asking a lot from someone, for some years, seen as their best player. Who else would they ask?
But Montolivo consistently just wasn't able to be an attacking midfielder, with serious playmaker duties, as well as carry his weight defensively. At times it was just too much I think and Montolivo had some collapsing performances where he basically failed on all fronts. He didn't contribute well to attack, awful sometimes in fact, and he wasn't able to carry out his defensive duties either.

This season I'm more seeing a Montolivo with some much simpler tasks and it has really helped his performances.
The emergence of talented players in front of him like Vargas (moving him further forward has been a great move) and of course Jovetic, plus the clever signing of Marchionni, has relieved him of a lot of attacking duties.

He doesn't have to always be the one trying to make something happen anymore. With attempted passes or runs.
Now a lot of the time he can just concentrate on more simple distribution to the people around him and they too can make something happen. In fact they're more likely to!

As a result we're now seeing Montolivo less often in the final third where he has struggled with less space. Because Fiorentina now have players who can do great things even there. In the tightest of spots.
Montolivo then from further back can start counter attacks or seek out people with a deep ball, under not so much pressure and much more comfortable. OR just do something simple.
He isn't the best attacking player anymore and he isn't forced to pretend that he is.

This has of course also done wonders for his defensive performances where it's been a lot easier to maintain good position when not having to play catch up from failed attacking duties.

Could it be argued then that Montolivo really has made the list cause of great teammates who've made him look better?

I think that had he done very well with his previous huge responsibility that it would have been something worthy of a much higher placing. But he just isn't that good.
I do think however that in this current role that he is showing enough good things to earn a spot around this mark.
WITH a chance to get higher if it continues. He is better technically than some players still to come and pretty good defensively too, a little worse than some. A little better than others!

Last but not least a random thing about him which I didn't know but found interesting (liked even) when I read it on Wikipedia:

Somewhat unusually for an Italian footballer, Montolivo has publicly stated he is an atheist.


How about that?

183:

Kolo Toure - Manchester City - Côte d'Ivoire

Defender



Kolo Toure is someone who in his career has been called everything from terrible to excellent.

All the while during that I've always thought he was very good, but certainly at times last season doubts crept in while at times watching what looked like a quite shaky Arsenal defense.

However like I talked about in the introduction to this list I do believe such things very easily can have to do with the overall defensive balance of the team, which for Arsenal last year lead by central midfielders with some way to go still, certainly wasn't great.

In previous seasons even when still inexperienced at what was a new position, on more balanced teams, Toure has looked just great though, with the prime example being Arsenal's incredible unbeaten 03-04 title winning season where he was a key player in defense on a very well balanced team.
Another example was Arsenal's 2006 Champions League run where they reached the final and along the way managed an impressive 10 consecutive clean sheets.
It's special times like those when central defenders receive a lot of praise and Toure was no exception, getting recognition as one of the best in the world at his position.

Since then those kind of words and Kolo Toure in the same sentence have been much more rare.

I think he is basically the same player though. Maybe even slightly stronger now than then and of course more experienced.
He still has great athletic ability. Can win headers and save his team with great tackles.

And with secure ball control, he can still make those impressive runs forward.

He is neither as great as he may have looked when Arsenal's been good or as bad as he may have looked when they've struggled. Likely he is just somewhere in between.

With a decent start this season for his new team Manchster City, I say he is the 183rd best player in the world, is what he is!


182:

Yuri Zhirkov - Chelsea - Russia

Fullback/Winger



Unfortunately as I write this Zhirkov hasn't had any chance to really do anything for his new team Chelsea.

This is something that hasn't helped his ranking.

For the Russian national team and from the occasional look at him for CSKA in Europe though, he has shown himself to be very skilled technical player who with consistent raids down the left wing could make life complicated for opposing defenses and create goal scoring chances for his team.

This could be done with dribbling, crossing or just by being talented enough to be a key part in often breathtaking combinations with skilled teammates.

Overall I thought Zhirkov was a peculiar signing by Chelsea. On the one hand their leftback depth behind Ashley Cole is a little suspect but on the other hand he seems way too good to be just that, a back up.

Zhirkov is also to an extreme degree an all out attacking back who is below par defensively and really much more someone resembling a winger.
So you could say then, that's what they did, they bought him as a winger?

But Chelsea currently doesn't really play with wingers.

In their midfield diamond there is the left central midfielder spot. Where both Malouda and Frank Lampard can do very well while it's a little unclear to me what exactly Zhirkov could do.
It does involve not insignificant defensive duties, nothing new for someone sometimes playing fullback of course, but with a lot of action for that position more central, I wonder what he could do there. He is not exactly a player you'd feel confident in winning physical midfield battles or even holding his own there.

Another option which we could be seeing, once among others Didier Drogba, is off to the African Nations Cup, would be just Nicolas Anelka up front and an extra midfielder then playing instead of Drogba.
That would make room for Lampard in a central midfield attacking role and Zhirkov could play as the left-wing fighting/rotating the spot "just" with Malouda (interestingly with a new 4 year extension) as his main competition.
And of course this could be an option whenever one of Anelka/Drogba wouldn't be available.

All in all it's definitely premature to call Zhirkov the next Alexey Smertin at the club. Smertin who barely played in 3 years at the club. Arguably Zhirkov is a lot better anyway, but it does look like things won't be easy and it definitely hasn't been a great start for him.

Arsenal and Chelsea (and everyone should watch men's tennis!)

This weekend I was never home and my sporting viewing experience suffered somewhat because of it.
Some things that could have been watched on tv had to be watched online and some things that was watched online could have been watched in better quality!
Oh well it wasn't that bad but a nice reminder of why as a devoted sports addict I should always try and stay at home even moreso than I do already!

Between lots of football, Usain Bolt's insane running and a relative unknown Korean besting Tiger Woods one on one in a major golf championship, what I enjoyed the most this weekend was probably the tennis from the Montreal Masters.
Various players are just playing great tennis at an exceptional high level right now and watching them battle throughout this whole week was great.
Murray, Tsonga, Roddick and Del Potro were all awesome and Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Wawrinka and Verdasco not far behind.
It was just one great match after another and that it set a very deserved crowd record for this particular tournament is a good sign I think.
Men's tennis is where it's at right now and if people can stay injury free, the U.S Open should be spectacular.

On to the football and once again Ancelotti and Chelsea in what was somewhat of a deja vu, even if the opponent Hull, was far from the quality of their Charity Shield one.
Again things started of slow with too much short passing going through Mikel resulting in nothing positive except for Hull that is.
I do think Mikel is a good player who when the first few times I saw him thought would become an excellent one. Of that I'm not so sure anymore. But he is very strong and can do the simple things and play an effective holding midfielder role.
What he just isn't though is any kind of effective distributor in what is clearly meant to be an attacking possession game. He won't make that very good pass to people making runs in front of him and won't make a quick first touch pass to a Bosingwa coming forward. Or be part of a nice one-two or triangle with his colleagues in the diamond.

That was his role however so he did look to do those things but the result was turnovers and/or momentum for Hull. He was never comfortable and either took too long on the ball, lost it or both.
Resulting in 1-0 for Hull and Mikel getting substituted at halftime.

Following that Chelsea then naturally improved forward. Like in the Charity Shield game play became more direct and while Drogba was beasting upfront the likes of Malouda, Lampard and Anelka were making effective runs around him.
But overall it's kinda hard to be positive about this because the chances that Hull in the first half was getting because of poor Chelsea possession they were now getting because Chelsea's team defending wasn't very effective. While the diamond now certainly was able to attack well it wasn't able to defend very good and like in the Charity Shield game it looks vulnerable to width and there is just a general imbalance to the Chelsea defending. Something that's been rare for many years now with this team build by Mourinho.

So will Ancelotti next week just scrap the "Mikel "playmaker" experiment" and settle for the powerful direct attack that the diamond at least including Ballack can produce. Even with its defensive vulnerabilities or does he skip this raw diamond altogether and try something more Chelsea proven?

Based on his comments focusing quite a lot on complimenting the 2nd half direct play, I'm guessing the first one and that will be enough to beat a lot of teams. Actually, potentially all teams. That's how good these players are but over time unless the balance improves I don't see this team reaching the level it did playing basically optimal under Hiddink and again, like I wrote last week, it could mean a great opportunity for a league title lost.

And it's still very early days of course. Lots of things can happen and I'm sure they will.

For Arsenal however everything pretty much did happen. And all of it positive. Slaughtering a normaly very solid Everton team away is a great result.
Tactically the big news has been that Arsene Wenger is dumping the 4-4-2 in favour of a more flexible 4-3-3.
In retrospect this should probably already have happened a season ago but afterall the 4-4-2 has brought him and the club a lot of success and at least in theory should be a system where the not so good defensive Arsenal players will have a better chance of handling themselves.

"No other formation is as efficient in covering space" is one of Wenger's quotes but with the right players of course any non 4-4-2 system can be turned into one when defending.
Does Arsenal have the players to do this consistently right now?
I would say no but they definitely have a lot of players a lot better in 4-3-3 like systems than in a 4-4-2.
Their young talented central midfielders, Denilson, Song, Diaby or for that matter, world class for years now, Fabregas haven't really been able to handle themselves well enough defensively in a 4-4-2 central midfield. And on the wings neither have players like Nasri, Walcott, Van Persie, Arsharvin or Rosicky. They're just not good enough physically.
Not good enough without the ball. At least not when you're considering at least 3 rivals to the title are among the very strongest teams in the world.
The biggest counter against that without the ball weakness has of course been to keep the ball an overwhelming majority of the time. With Fabregas they have one of only a handfull of uniquely taltented players who can take a possession game to a high enough level to consistently win against tough competition.

Especially with Adebayor now gone there just isn't much justification left to try and achieve that in a 4-4-2.
All the versatile wide players would be better in three-forward lines and all the central type of midfielders much more effective with two players with them instead of just one.
One main strenght genereally of all the Arsenal players right now is also great movement.
Moving a lot both attacking-wise and defensively.
Not being solid defensive strongholds battling their zone in a 4-4-2, but they should at least be able to cover ground and perhaps, and I'm guessing this is Wenger's secret hope, be able to emulate the ball pressure that Barcelona does in their similar system immediatly after possession is over.
Not always winning the ball. That's a bonus! But at least doing enough to prevent an effective counter attack from the opponent.
Something Barcelona was very vulnerable to in Rijkaard's final season yet amazingly largely eliminated under Guardiola.
So while Arsenal's team defending still likely won't be great there is at least hope for improvement. More than in a 4-4-2 arguably,
And some successfull ball pressure and one or two of the wide forwards consistently making it back to defend a wing, could do wonders.

One of those wide forwards looks like it will be everyone's favorite player (to hate!) Nicklas Bendtner!
Even if I'm possibly one of the least patriotic people in the world I could be accused of being biased as a dane when it comes to definitely not hating Bendtner.
Instead it's quite the opposite and I think he is an extremely talented player who has that size/ability combination that can be of such great value to a team.
I'm not saying that particular combination is on the Zlatan Ibrahimovic scale but for a big strong guy Bendtner does have good technique and does have good movement.
If he didn't he could never try and play this position we're seein him in now in the first place.
Certainly a great coach like Wenger would never put him there.
Still common sense would suggest it should be the other way around between Van Persie, playing center forward and Bendtner a right-forward role.
From watching the game it wasn't even my impression that they switched around all that much.
Something I had expected when first hearing about this.

One factor is that Van Persie has improved as a striker. He has started to do these striker kind of things like more actively seeking the run in between the defenders.
And while I think that Bendtner arguably is more effective in the box itself, Van Persie certainly is still better complementing a Fabregas or Asharvin coming from behind.
He is also needless to say more reliable when it comes to the actual business of putting good scoring chances away.
It's pretty banal but has a nice logic to it: It's better for Van Persie to get most of the final touches on the very good chances our great attack creates than it is Bendtner.

But make no mistake about it. This is about Bendtner's strenghts too. While he moves well enough with the ball to not exactly be an easy matchup for most fullbacks, his strenght and size advantage over I would think almost all of them, makes him a really tough matchup and it definitely created a lot of trouble for Everton dealing with it.
Playing the deeper higher ball to somewhere with a mismatch to their advantage was a very nice addition to the Arsenal arsenal and the results were great.
In the beginning he quite easily won headers resulting in dangerous situations and when Everton consequently later felt forced to foul him, the dead ball and huge defensive fail, resulted in goals.

Of the Liverpool-Tottenham and United-Birmingham games I really only watched parts and in less than desired quality but I may post some about them later.

I did watch all of Manchester City-Blackburn but forgot to write anything about it! Mainly thoughts on City.

So actually I'm pretty sure I'll do somekind of other football entry in one of the next few days so stay tuned.

Football/Soccer seaon (finally!): First entry

So the european football season has now finally begun!

About time too after weeks and weeks of crazy transfer rumors and even crazier transfers has left me starving for actual action.

So naturally this weekend I watched a lot!

Things started of very slow with the second half of the Italian Super Cup. And on what was a crappy stream I'm not sure how much I have to offer there about the game itself but it's a nice excuse for a little Inter rambling:

I'm not sure Mourinho is fully set yet on whether he will be using the for Inter very successful 4-4-2 diamond or his own beloved anti-dutch 4-3-3, but one luxury Inter has is a lot of depth at most positions and Mourinho really has a lot of options.
I think even if it can seem very unlike Mourinho that within the 4-4-2 diamond he recognizes that an elite creative player in front of Cambiasso is needed to take that system to a level that's better than just being able to best what in the recent post-calciopoli years has been a very weakened Serie A.
At least compared to what were the recent glory days of italian domination with at times as much as seven clubs being among the best in Europe.
An elite creative player needed to reach that 10 percent chance he recently claimed they have right now of winning the elusive European Cup.

Really with a solid cast of quality defensive or just very capable two-way players the diamond could quite easily afford say a Deco (Van Der Vaart and Sneijder have also been mentioned) when surrounded by guys like Cambiasso and a rotating supporting cast featuring the likes of the resurgent Thiago Motta, Stankovic, Muntari and last but not least the ageless Javier Zanetti, without comprimising the defensive side of things but actually strengthening the overall balance of the team.

Ideally Mourinho would probably still prefer his effective 4-3-3 system where an effective attack is in place without ever compromising the defense and I think he secretly hopes that players like Amautovic, Suarez and an improving Balotelli can succed where players like Mancini and Quaresma failed so hard that middle of the season he had to give the system entirely up.
If the Mourinho 4-3-3 at some point again becomes the permanent fixture I'll give my very long take on it since I find it quite fascinating how the primarely most attacking system here is turned into a very calculating defensive one.

But the Super Cup itself? What did I see? Other than very bad picture quality, not much.

Well Eto'o looked kinda good. Not very 36yearoldish which I suspect is closer to his real age than the 28 his passport so wrongly claims.

Yes he will be good when healthy and Inter have a lot of forward depth so they will be in no way as dependant on him like they were on now departed Ibrahimovic.
It will especially be interesting to see Diego Milito finally get a chance at a big club.
One he definitely deserves after years of excellent play.

Then it was time for what was a very grandiose Bundesliga opening. Live on national german tv and they even had an opening ceremony!
This was after all a tremendous success last season with enormous crowds filling very good post German World Cup facilities and almost shameless attacking play from just about everyone making just about every german understandably very excited about his league.
Last season every single top team on average let in more than one goal per game and that's just crazy!
This was very very open play and if as a starting striker you didn't net good double figures what an utter failure you were:
There was however no failure whatsoever from champions Wolfsburg's attacking duo up front of Dzeko and Grafite, or should I say trio cause Misimovic with his creativity was a huge part of it, and they just couldn't stop scoring even if they tried and the younger of the two, Dzeko attracted a lot of attention from various European top clubs.
The fact that a club like Wolfsburg resisted pressure to sell to traditional giants like AC Milan, that alone speaks volumes and they deserve a lot of credit for it.

The opening game itself actually wasn't that open and perhaps, perhaps not(!), a sign of what Wolfsburg will face this season. What I think an 80 goals scored attacking machine SHOULD face this season.
Stuttgart came out with a defensive gameplan and in large parts of the 90 minutes controlled things very well with plenty of people working behind the ball minimizing space.
For a while they were even creating the better chances. Making excellent use of the qualities of new signing Pogrebnyak up front and some very nice looking two-way play from Sami Khedira from behind.
On the defensive side of things "Aston Villa legend" and now VBF captain Thomas Hitzlsperger did mostly a great job on Misimovic while Alexander Hleb on the forward side of things looked like he still has some ways to go before returning to his old impressive form.

Sadly one slip up is all it takes against this good an attack and for the first time really there wasn't instant pressure on Misimovic and he was left with some actual space, he took matters into his own hands and just outside the penalty area fired a nice shot past the Stuttgart keeper and in many ways that was that really.

Stuttgart like they simply had to now tried to attack, but before getting anything going really, was very predictably punished for the space now left behind.
Last season's top scorer Grafite had a one on one situation with a defender that he easily won with part power, part technique and made it 2-0. Game over!

In between my main focus on Serie A, the English Premier League and La Liga I don't really know how much Bundesliga I'll be able to squeeze into my very busy sports addiction scheduele, but just like its total opposite, the lately quite defensive French League, I'll definitely watch out for interesting games on the horizon. And hopefully write about them too!

I don't know either if I'll do an organized actual preview of anything either, the leagues I mean, or more take things as they come and go from there.
Watch some games every week and analyze from that. That way I also think I'll eventually have touched upon a lot of the interesting transfers that's been taking place.

Finally, I of course also watched the Charity Shield game.
Everytime basically the top teams from England face eachother it's a must watch these days. They're all european elite and the level of play is generally very high and therefore great to watch.
This was extra interesting because it would be a first look at Ancelotti's Chelsea and how would that constellation work?

It's too early to conclude much from one match of course and that happened to be especially the case in this game where I found myself concluding completely different things from each half.

The first half was in some ways a worst case scenario for what the Chelsea/Ancelotti partnership could result in and it actually brought back otherwise long forgotten memories of Ancelotti back in the day when he came to Juventus continuing with the exact same style and tactics he had used on what was his quite different Parma team.

Now of course here we have a Chelsea team COMPLETELY different from Ancelotti's AC Milan yet what did I see?
Unbelievably in that first half, Chelsea was kind of looking like Milan. Stylewise as well as tactically.
The ball was passed around quite a bit in their own half. That doesn't have to be a bad thing if you have Andrea Pirlo but with Jon Obi Mikel it's a different story.
Ivanovic on rightback looked like he had been asked to do a Cafu impression with the guy who might have been able to do that on the bench, Bosingwa, Ivanovic struggled mightely.
Even the always superb Essien, for many years now easily one of the best players in the world, struggled and couldn't defend the wing very effectively.
That's understandable when it's C. Ronaldo but this was Nani and he quite easily exploited what was a lack of Chelsea balance in that first half.
In order for that midfield diamond with its lack of width to work against this good a 4-4-2, with lots of width, possession needs to be quality and the ball not given away. The fullbacks creating width not getting caught forwardish on their heels.
But Chelsea does not have the players to substain that high level of possession (though I won't rule out Deco and Zhirkov contributing there) so ball was lost and the result was a very uncharacteristic unbalanced Chelsea defense.
Great job Carlo!
Then came the second half and it was more like same old Chelsea.
Whether it was player or coach adjustment I of course can't now, but play became much more direct with deeper passing and if the ball was lost it was sure to be lost deep in the opponent's half where it doesn't matter much and you can obtain solid defensive positioning while not constantly being on your backheels.
Generally when Chelsea gets direct passes to their players in around the penalty area, bad things tends to happen to the opponent.
That's where players like Lampard, Ballack, Malouda, Anelka and of course especially Drogba, the prime weapon, are effective and players around them benefit resulting in scoring chances (even for someone like Cavalho).
No need to pass the ball around in their own half. Get it up there and let them do their thing!

That's what they generally did in that second half and it resulted in a couple of goals.

It will be interesting to see which of the two halves we'll see the most of or if some sort of effective middleground can be found. Maybe Anelka playing a different role than being a pure striker or maybe just another midfielder in there to counter all the 4-4-2 width Ancelotti's system will now face in England.
I did think Hiddink found that great ground of playing to his team's strenghts but if Ancelotti goes the Scolari way and ignores his team's actual strenghts then it's a golden opportunity for a title lost, against rivals, who unlike Chelsea, have all lost key players.

Manchester United of course I still expect to replace at least some of the world class they've lost with the departures of Tevez and Ronaldo. Something that just hasn't happened yet.
I think both David Silva and Kun Aguero who there have both been speculations about could put them over the top and despite, as I'm writing this rumors seemingly dying down, I'll still be suprised if there isn't a major signing sooner rather than later.

Can a team not replacing two such great players really win the title against what are the strongest top 4-5 in Europe?

I don't think the Charity Shield provided much of an answer to that question, and a lot of it I guess will be how Liverpool and Arsenal react to their own losses of key players (and Chelsea to their new manager).

All in all the EPL with it's 4 or 5 horse race, where others are just 2 or 3 horse races, looks very unpredictable, so we shall see and I'll definitely be watching.