(Photo by Lee Warren/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
Brazilian fans enjoy being arrogant and saying that their players are the best of the world - always!
Still, does this whole behaviour make sense? Is Brazil actually the best national team ever? Are Brazilian players the best in the world?
I have conducted an interesting mathematical research, that will prove whether or not Brazilian fans have the right to be arrogant.
Individual success
Individual awards:
The FIFA World Player of the Year award was won 8 times by Brazilian players, three times by French players. Two Italian and two Portuguese players have also grabbed the award, just like one player out of Germany, Liberia and the Netherlands.
So, at first sight Brazil would look like a dominant country. Not if you compare the size of the countries.
Brazil has a population of 180m., compared to Portugal's 10m. that's a lot, really.
Still, Figo and Ronaldo won the title coming out of a population of 10m., which means that the success rate of Portuguese players, is much larger than that of Brazilian players, since they would have to have 36(!) players, that won the title, in order to equal Portugal's rate.
If we look at the winners since 2000 we would find out, that if we combine the population of the countries of European winners (Italy, France, Portugal), it would still be much smaller than Brazil's population and still, these European nations combined have more WPOTY awards than Brazil (5-4 in the last nine years).
Unlike most of you will think, the most successful player in the FIFA WPOTY awards is Zizou. He was 3x number one (record alongside Ronaldo), still he was 1x number two and 3x number three, thus giving him an edge over Ronaldo.
On a further analysis, you'll find, out that Ronaldinho is the third most successful player, At fourth there is a tie between Romário, Figo and George Weah! Following would be Ronaldo and Di Baggio.
When searching for which player has the most team titles, Vito Baía (Portugal) has 32, way ahead of Pelé and Rijkaard, each with 25 a piece.
When talking about the best player of the world, there is a big discussion between Pelé and Maradona, and some experts even claim the spot for the Portuguese Eusébio (the European player that won the Ballon D'Or and the Golden Boot and has the best goal-match rate in history).
Who helped the growth of notable teams?
Brazilian fans often claim that their players are the ones, that put European teams on the map. How much of this is true?
Not much.
Real Madrid was launched into stardom by an Argentine, Di Stefano, Barcelona by the Dutchman Cruyff.
Although some might say, that Barça's first "Dream Team" ('92 season) was launched by Romário, this could not be further from the truth. It is true that Romário was the best scorer, but he was the only Brazilian in the team, not to mention the fact that he shared the spotlight with Guardiola, Bakero, Begiristain, Goikoetxea, Hagi, Koeman Ladrup and ,most notably, Hristo Stoichkov.
British teams never had great sympathy for Brazilian players and in Italy, the only legend coming outside of the old continent is Maradona. Platini and Di Baggio are the biggest legends in Italy (at least when we count their awards).
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