Best Players Who Never Played in the Premier League
Ask any football fan who does not reside in either England or Spain what the most exciting league in the world is, and their answer will almost invariably be the Premier League.
Naturally there are the dissenters in favour of the Primera Liga, but the general consensus is that the top tier of English football is the most exciting, unpredictable and best quality exhibition of the domestic game you can see.
However, the anti-Premier League brigade do have a major point on their side of the argument—let’s look at who could currently be considered the 10 best players in the world: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Gareth Bale, Neymar, Andres Iniesta, Eden Hazard, Angel Di Maria, Zlatan Ibrahimovich and Arjen Robben.
Only two (Hazard and Di Maria) are currently registered in England, four (Ronaldo, Suarez, Bale and Robben) are guilty of defecting from the so-called best league on the planet, four have never represented an English club, and—the decisive blow—six are playing in La Liga right now.
Even if we expanded to include the next 10 best players (maybe Bastian Schweinsteiger, Sergio Ramos et al), the result would be about the same.
So while the Premier League may have it in exhibition terms (pace, unpredictability), La Liga arguably has the highest ratio of top-quality players.
This is not a new phenomenon either; if we look back over the 22 seasons since the Premier League was founded, many of the world’s best talents never even looked towards English shores.
All stats are courtesy of Transfermarkt.co.uk unless linked otherwise.
10: Ronaldinho
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Despite winning everything there is to win with a team and as an individual, when looking back on Ronaldinho’s career, there is the persistent feeling that, like George Best, somehow it could have been even better—did you know that at youth level he once scored every goal in a 23-0 victory?
No one is questioning his natural talent or even the application of that talent, but the player who rose to prominence during the 2002 World Cup before embarking on an assault of Europe that yielded three league titles and a Champions League always seemed a little distracted by fame.
His penchant for parties, coupled with self-regard, translated into occasional selfishness on the pitch, leaving us to wonder whether better decision-making would have elevated Ronaldinho to the status of all-time great.
Still, countless assists, 274 goals in 686 career appearances to date—including that audacious free-kick against England in the 2002 World Cup that catapulted him to stardom—and some of the quickest feet on record mean that only doubts that hang over Ronaldinho’s talent relate to whether he could have taken it even further.
9: Gianluigi Buffon
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The greatest goalkeeper of all time?
Maybe (he does have the tag of most expensive goalkeeper of all time—£32.6 million), but while contenders such as Lev Yashin, Oliver Kahn, Peter Schmeichel, Gordon Banks and Manuel Neuer all provide competition in terms of ability, none (not even Kahn or Schmeichel) can match Buffon’s organisation of the men in front of him.
Buffon has a decent haul of silverware to show off, including five Scudetti, a UEFA Cup, a World Cup and eight Serie A Goalkeeper of the Year awards from 13, along with longevity achievements including 720 career appearances at club level (494 for Juventus) and 143 for Italy.
Particularly impressive was his decision to remain with Juventus throughout the club’s relegation from and promotion back into the Italian top flight.
Even aged 36, Buffon is still an integral member of both the Italian and Juventus teams, his all-round goalkeeping ability bolstered by the effect of his presence on the pitch, despite being projected from between the posts.
8: Rivaldo
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The second of the “Three Rs”, along with Ronaldo and Ronaldino, who propelled Brazil to 2002 World Cup victory, it’s a shame that Rivaldo’s contribution to the tournament is overshadowed by the ridiculous play-acting that led to the dismissal of Turkey’s Hakan Unsal in a group match.
However, Rivaldo’s five goals and overall form in the competition go some way towards erasing that blemish, particularly his round-of-16 volley against Belgium.
The 1999 Ballon d’Or winner lays claim to being one of the best attacking playmakers of all time, his superior skill and distribution balanced by an unerring aptitude at set pieces, and this showed in Rivaldo’s club-level achievements.
In fact, when you add 12 league titles and a Champions League to his international and individual accolades (World Cup, Copa America and Ballon d’Or), it’s quite easy to forget that infamous clutch of the face...
7: Cafu
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Cafu’s inclusion on this list is the result of a long debate over the respective attributes of him and fellow Brazilian full-back Roberto Carlos, and in the end it was decided that Cafu’s defensive abilities put him just above his compatriot.
However, defensive ability was only taken into account for academic purposes—the real reason Cafu is so highly regarded in all-time football history was for his attacking instincts.
After breaking into the Brazil national side just in time to claim a first World Cup in 1994, it was manager Luiz Felipe Scolari’s decision to grant Cafu and Carlos a licence to maraud that was the critical factor in winning the 2002 competition following the 1998 final capitulation against France.
Thought better known for his international exploits, Cafu claimed top honours at club level, winning Serie A titles with AC Milan and Roma and also the Champions League with the former—guess there’s no need to mention the fake passport controversy of 2004... (Cafu was acquitted).
6: Xavi Hernandez
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The driving force behind Barcelona’s recent domestic and European dominance, and along with Andres Iniesta, architect of their trademark “tiki-taka” rhythmic passing game, Xavi is widely (and correctly) considered one of the greatest playmakers of all time.
Blessed with superior vision and unerring accuracy, Xavi Hernandez i Creus graduated from La Masia to spend his entire career (barring a shock transfer this year or next) with Barcelona, in the process becoming the orchestrator of a passing game that for a while was the envy of the world.
Seven league titles, three Champions Leagues, two European Championships and a World Cup later, ironically the only things standing between Xavi and at least one Ballon d’Or are team-mates Iniesta and Lionel Messi, with the 34-year-old’s chances of claiming the award shrinking along with his first-team berth as age catches up.
Regardless, the Catalonian can reminisce on not only captaining Barcelona and Spain to unprecedented success but also becoming recognised as the epitome of the “perfect” passing game, best exemplified by a 91 percent passing success rate at the 2010 World Cup.
5: Lothar Matthaus
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The only German to have won the Ballon d’Or, his country’s most-capped player and the only person to have featured in five World Cups, as with a lot of midfield engines, Matthaus’ achievements are relatively unsung compared to some of the other names in this list.
Though he started out with Borussia Monchengladbach, Matthaus became synonymous with Bayern Munich and the six Bundesliga titles he won with them during two spells with the club, the first between 1984 and 1988, and the second spanning 1992-2000.
Even during the years he spent in the Italy with Inter Milan, he picked up a Scudetto and UEFA Cup, though Matthaus never managed to capture club football’s top accolade, having to settle for European Cup runners-up medals in 1987 and 1999.
Germany’s 1990 World Cup victory aside, the enduring image of Matthaus is—somewhat cruelly—the look of utter disbelief on his face as, having been substituted 11 minutes earlier, he could only watch from the side lines as Manchester United stole the Champions League trophy from under his nose in the last minute of injury time.
4: Paulo Maldini
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Defenders are often underrepresented in “Best Players of...” lists, but someone like Maldini is impossible to ignore.
How many left-backs, or players in any position for that matter, can claim to have achieved the following: 25 seasons with the same club, seven league titles, five European Cups (including three runners-up medals), all-time appearance records in the Serie A, UEFA club competitions and World Cups, all topped off with the fastest goal in European Cup final history (50 seconds against Liverpool in 2005)?
AC Milan’s last No. 3 is arguably the greatest defender the world has ever seen, a standing recognised by FIFA when he became the first to be nominated for the Ballon d’Or in 1994, and it is no coincidence that Maldini was ever-present during the Rossoneri’s most successful period.
Unlike most of the players on this list, Maldini managed to avoid any ignominy during his career, despite its length, though he did come close—Milan’s three-goal capitulation against Liverpool in the 2005 Champions League final is a blot, but one that Maldini was able to rectify by becoming a champion of Europe for the fifth time two years later.
3: Zinedine Zidane
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So good was “Zizou” that the year before his illustrious career ended in acrimony with that headbutt on Marco Materazzi, a documentary (Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait) consisting entirely of on-field Zidane footage was released to widespread positive reviews, even outside of footballing circles.
Described as the best player of the modern era by luminaries including Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, Michel Platini and Cesare Maldini—Italy’s 1998 World Cup manager who famously said he would trade five players for Zidane—it is almost fitting that such a stellar career went out with a bang (or butt?).
One of the great footballing artists, Zidane represented four clubs across a 17-year career, most famously Juventus and Real Madrid, and he remains one of few players who have won all the top accolades in football—league titles, the Champions League, the World Cup, the European Championship and, of course, a Ballon d’Or.
But the Materazzi headbutt wasn’t an isolated incident—in 2000 Zidane was banned for a similar attack on Hamburger SV’s Jochen Kientz, and it is speculated that the combination of his tough northern Marseille upbringing and racial discrimination suffered in his youth as a result of his Algerian roots influenced Zidane’s on-field conduct in both a positive and negative way.
2: Ronaldo
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Known to some as the “Real Ronaldo,” to others as “Fat Ronaldo,” one thing that cannot be disputed is the Brazilian’s status as the best player in the world, which he could lay claim to at various points between 1996 and 2004.
The complete forward, Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima’s 352 goals in 518 career appearances led to him to being dubbed “The Phenomenon” but translated into just three league titles—though he fared better on the international and personal fronts, collecting two World Cups, two Copa Americas and two Ballons d’Or.
But despite Ronaldo’s legacy, for most there are two moments that define his career, each lying at either end of the spectrum.
One is the hat-trick he scored against Manchester United in the 2002-03 Champions League, a feat that hadn’t been done at Old Trafford since Dennis Bailey in 1992 (though some attribute Real’s dominance in that game to Zinedine Zidane and Luis Figo).
The other is slightly more incongruous—Ronaldo being removed from, then reinstated to the Brazil team sheet ahead of the 1998 World Cup final remains on the unsolved mysteries of football.
Despite the subsequent explanation that it had been due to him suffering a convulsive fit, many of us remember the pictures of an ill-looking Ronaldo during the national anthems as the façade of something possibly deeper.
1: Lionel Messi
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The greatest ever?
Everyone seems to think so—from Pele and Diego Maradona to commentators and pundits, even Mario Balotelli conceded that he may be inferior (though only slightly) to the diminutive Argentinian.
When examining Messi’s career (so far, he’s only 27), the most difficult aspect is finding records that, if he hasn’t broken them already, will remain unbroken when he hangs up his boots in what will hopefully be no less than seven or eight years.
Four consecutive Ballons d’Or, 91 goals in a calendar year, 50 La Liga goals in one season, five goals in a Champions League game, all-time Barcelona top scorer...you need longer than a lunch-break just for the better-known records, let alone the web of statistical achievements.
Some detractors point to his lack of prowess on the international stage (did they miss the 42 goals in 93 games?) or the fact that Messi’s Barcelona achievements are in fact reliant on the support of Xavi and Andres Iniesta (a void accusation when referring to a team sport).
But there is very little argument against his technical ability, pace, vision and shooting being considered as the finest to ever grace a football pitch, particularly taking into account the differences between today’s game and the one inhabited by Pele and Maradona.
In a way Messi would probably agree that a World Cup-less career might seem lacking when compared to the all-time greats, but it is hard to imagine a single player influencing today’s game in the way that his predecessors did and also hard to imagine anyone getting as close as Messi has, does and will continue to do.
