Its obviously Cruyff, though, any chance that Robben makes, say, top 3-5?
Who is the greatest Dutch player of all time?
- Thread starter horsechoker
- Start date
Johan Cruyff .......by a distance
??
I'd definitely have Cafu over Didi. Probably the greatest RB of all time, not just Brazilian.
Cruyff.
Behind that to complete the top 5 there are:
Van Basten
Robben
Rijkaard
Gullit
Behind that to complete the top 5 there are:
Van Basten
Robben
Rijkaard
Gullit
I would put Robben on 3rd place, after Cruyff and Van Basten. Certainly the best Dutch player of the last few decades
Christ, who pissed in your cornflakes? Yes, Krol and Neeskens should be on the bench but I don't think they were better than de Boer, Gullit, or Seedorf.
Also there's a brilliant bit of technology called YouTube, you might consider looking into it...
I suggest a more realistic thread title.....
Who is the second greatest Dutch player of all time?
Who is the second greatest Dutch player of all time?
Only correct answer is Van Basten.
Hehe - true.
But the fact remains that Puskas too has official games for Spain.
Point is - I suppose: different era. Different rules. Different...everything. And also - this is about football, not passports.
Is Puskas a Hungarian footballer - or a Spanish one? Clearly Hungarian on the whole.
Di Stefano? Perhaps not as clear cut - but to me he's Argentinian. At the very least he can be reasonably considered as such when considering who the best ever Argentinian player is.
I still don't think that there's any debate. It's Pelé > Zico, Garrincha & Ronaldo. Ronaldo got fecked by his injuries, Zico didn't won the World Cup, Garrincha was always an alternative for those who didn't like Pelé's marketing-friendly persona. I'd be surprised if you'd be able to find any serious list where Pelé won't be on the comfortable first place, as he should.
Di Stefano is clearly Argentinian in my mind to.
You dont ever hear him in the discussion for "best spanish player ever", do you?
Most would have him in top 3 in Argentine history i'd say, which is insane enough, considering the top 2 will automatically be Maradona and Messi.
I simply forgot about him
He certainly has a place next to van Persie (and Kluivert), probably slightly ahead of both based on his overall career.Cruyff. Close thread and open up a new one about Best French player instead.
Best is clearly Cruyff, second place I'd give to Robben but I haven't seen too much of van Basten and Gullit.
nice post. That’s a hell of team!
Well sure in terms of club careers and trophies won Robben achieved a little more, there's no denying that. Although RVP has achieved some really nice things that Robben doesn't have. Easy to forget he was the golden boy in a Feyenoord side that won the UEFA Cup in 2002. This was the only time and the last time this century a Dutch team won a European trophy, and the impact was obviously immense, dare I say that perhaps it was an even bigger achievement for Dutch football than Bayern winning the CL in 2013 was for German football. And obviously on an individual level, RVP retired as the all time leading goalscorer for the Netherlands, two times top scorer of the biggest league in the world, Robben never managed to top the charts like that. There are also some uncanny parallels between the two, like them both being Dutch left footed players who started their career on the left wing, both missing rouhgly 50% of their matches between 2002-2010 through injuries, both moving to England in their early twenties, they had great chemistry as well playing together for the Dutch NT, sadly we've seen way to little of that when they were in the 20-27 years of age range. I guess that's what reminded me of Xavi/Iniesta a little.
Used to be the hipster choice.
I mean - in my circles. Pelé is the one your granny knows about. Garrincha, though - he was the real genius.
And so forth.
(You can push that sort of hipsterism up a level easily too - Julinho anyone?).
Hipsters have always been idiots, though - so there's that.
Not that there's anything idiotic about rating Garrincha extremely highly. But most reasonable people with an interest in football history would - simply - say that Pelé is a notch above all things said and done.
I'm not trying to be rude or disagree with the selection at all and love it (specially as I grew up in Holland in the 80's / 90's and those players were my idols!), but you're missing a huge number of players from '74 & '78 when they got to the WC finals and - bit like if we were to do the Brazil all time XI there would be a lot of posters would put Cafe / Ronaldinho etc in it and not really knowing the names of the players who won the WC in the 60's and 70's. But then I wouldn't be doing research into players of 74 & 78 etc either
My only adjustment if I were to stick to your near XI I would change Rijkaard was a very quick / strong aggresive holding midfielder in his prime and only turned defender in his late age, hence I'd put Stam in over Rijkaard (phyiscal and very pacey), Crujiff out to left wing and put in Bergkamp behind MVB
But I'd happily put your team out against any other in the world and be confident
Jordi.
The best Cruyff.
My favourite 3 Dutchies.
Seedorf, Bergkamp and Robben.
My favourite 3 Dutchies.
Seedorf, Bergkamp and Robben.
Well, yes, it's easy to forget because he was 18, appeared in only 17 games in all competitions and didn't score a single goal. He was subbed off an hour into the UEFA Cup final. He was seen as a big talent but he was far from a key player in that side. Whereas it's fair to say that Bayern wouldn't have made any of their three CL finals between 2010 and 2013 without Robben.
The goals argument is misleading in my opinion: Van Persie became a number nine at Arsenal, Robben was always a winger, and not the Cristiano Ronaldo type. Considering that, his goal per game of 0.34 over his whole career is very respectable and at Bayern it was at 0.46 (Van Persie at Arsenal managed a 0.47); he's probably the most prolific wide player not called Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi of the last decade. It's actually a bit funny: over their whole career, Van Persie has 65 more goals, Robben has 65 more assists.
In short: Van Persie was great but Robben was better, partly because he achieved significantly more in his career and that matters.
I think Jordi Cruyff should be up there
It's obviously Cruyff. If they would do a vote on this in the Netherlands, they'd probably just ask who people thought was second-best; otherwise it's just a waste of time.
Also: @horsechoker for including Kuyt - good one!
Yeah, there is a strong 90s-to-now bias in the thread - and even the posters that do go further back kinda stop at the 70s WC teams. Moulijn and Wilkes are huge historically, although that starts taking you into generations where you really can't compare to later players anymore. Abe Lenstra would be another one from the pre-70s.
Also:
@horsechoker for including Kuyt - good one!How many CLs / Premier Leagues did your Cruyffs and Gullits win, though?
Raimond, though
Raimond, though
Hipsters all over the world, romantics/purist in Brazil, at least in my experience. Pelé sold his image all over the world with endless coffee adverts and his voyage to MLS — while all Garrincha ever wanted was to play football (or, to specify, to play football beautifully). Garrincha’s mental issues (that are very well documented) somehow make him an icon of a proper football, free from consumerism and publicity. Pelé even gets blamed for Garrincha dying from alcoholism (he should’ve helped him out etc).
Apologies if he’s already been mentioned on this thread, but I just don’t see it, but Johnny Rep deserves a huge shout on this thread.
Apart from the magnificent name, he was magnificent on the pitch, a footballer who would easily be in the 5 footballers on the planet today. But with so many others being so brilliant, it’s understandably why Rep has been forgotten or never heard of.
Apart from the magnificent name, he was magnificent on the pitch, a footballer who would easily be in the 5 footballers on the planet today. But with so many others being so brilliant, it’s understandably why Rep has been forgotten or never heard of.
It's between Van Basten and Cruyff as they are the only ones that are real all time greats from Holland. Between them from what I've seen I'd say Van Basten. Just a monster really.
Seedorf
Wow thank you, I appreciate that. You seem extremely knowlegeable about Brazilian football. How do you seem to have such a great insight if I may ask?
Whoever you prefer
In fairness, a lot of us don't know where to place someone like Wilkes in the pantheon of greats (partly because of a lack of footage as he is featured only twice in the grainy footballia archive base), despite having him in back of our minds because of the narratives surrounding him. With the likes of Walter for Germany or Didi for Brazil, you can at least refer to the 1954 or 1958 World Cups as landmark testaments of their purported greatness, on top of what they achieved in general with the national team and at club level with Kaiserslautern/Botafogo. In comparison, Wilkes is much harder to pin down as he has 0 World Cup participations and 1 Olympic participation (where he scored 3 goals but was eliminated in Round 1), so forming a semi-rigorous opinion is an impractical endeavor. Ditto other enigmatic figures from that era or before like Rijvers, Smit, van Heel...as well as Lenstra, yes.
Interestingly, he is still their highest scorer in the World Cup competitions.
For what reason?
Cruyff
MVB
Gullit
MVB
Gullit
Cruyf. Easy.
After him...well, that is hard. I would say;
Gullit
After him...well, that is hard. I would say;
Gullit
No love for Neeskens?
Yeah, you're totally right - and I should have added that I could not do any better myself. In fact, I would do much worse. I mean, I know that a line-up that features no pre-90s players in defence is clearly incomplete, as someone like Blind is not one of NL's best defenders ever (especially not if played anywhere outside CB), but I don't know myself what the actual best defence would be. I'm just a lazy armchair critic of knowledgeable armchair critics, really.
It's kinda similar with lists that don't include anyone before the 70s; but I guess you have to put a cut-off point somewhere in order to create an evidence-based list. And that cut-off will be a little later for NL than for countries like England or Brasil, who were playing at a high international level much earlier, and therefore have more footage and other info available. Because of that lack of high international level, it's also hard to say how good people really were. Lenstra, for example, is a legend, but never played outside the Netherlands, and otherwise only played 47 national team games in the 50s. It's hard to place him comparatively that way. (In that context, has Beb Bakhuys been mentioned yet? 30s hero of the flying header!)
I think that's fair - although I've watched plenty of those classic matches on YouTube, I'm certainly far less familiar with that generation.I'm not trying to be rude or disagree with the selection at all and love it (specially as I grew up in Holland in the 80's / 90's and those players were my idols!), but you're missing a huge number of players from '74 & '78 when they got to the WC finals and - bit like if we were to do the Brazil all time XI there would be a lot of posters would put Cafe / Ronaldinho etc in it and not really knowing the names of the players who won the WC in the 60's and 70's. But then I wouldn't be doing research into players of 74 & 78 etc either
My only adjustment if I were to stick to your near XI I would change Rijkaard was a very quick / strong aggresive holding midfielder in his prime and only turned defender in his late age, hence I'd put Stam in over Rijkaard (phyiscal and very pacey), Crujiff out to left wing and put in Bergkamp behind MVB
But I'd happily put your team out against any other in the world and be confident
Your adjustment makes sense as well - now that I think about it, Rijkaard is a better fit as a partner for Gullit since the latter would be far more of a roamer. Stam also makes sense as a partner for Koeman. I went for Overmars more so for the balance of the side - I like the contrast in having an inverted winger on the right and someone hugging the touchline down the left, plus I felt you'd lose a bit of what made Cruyff so special if he was on the wing as opposed to centrally. Overall agreed though that Bergkamp was the better player between him and Overmars.
And your post certainly didn't come across as rude! Love to hear the perspective of others; especially those who clearly know what they're on about!
Cruyff has an argument for best player ever, so better to ask second best. Gullit for me, or Van Basten, an astounding player robbed of his peak years.
I’m from the Netherlands, and can tell you all that you will have to search long and hard to find anything resembling this thread in Dutch.
Glad van Hanegem mentioned.
Add Faas Wilkes to the honourables list?
Amazed at how few people mentioned Krol. Thought you'd have him higher than 10th.
No Piet Keizer?
(Interesting piece on him)
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