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Most underrated player ever??
Most underrated player ever??
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Replies: 189
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Gabriel Batistuta
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I never saw him play personally and I susepct the majority of posters on here are too young to know of him but a player called Robin Friday from the 1970's was said to be on a different planet from everyone he played both with and against. Even today, older supporters at Reading remember him fondly, that being the club where he spent his best few years.
However, he had a total rebel attitude to the game and to life generally and packed it in ridicously early. Died stupidly young, if memory serves me correctly, through over indulgence in many things. His story is told in a book (part written by the Oasis drummer I think) called the 'The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw'. It is a terrific tale and the bit about the accident he had with a spiked railing in his very early days makes your eyes water. Strongly recommened as a read for younger football supporters today who probably don't fully realise just how much the game has changed the past thirty odd years. In the 1970's more players had real charisma BUT many were clearly not athletes like now!! |
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boban is a great shout............
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Theo Walcott.
Everybody likes to talk about how sh1t he is, yet he scores and creates goals at a similar rate to most of his contemporaries in the division. This is an "under-rated" player. Honestly, what the f**k are some of the suggestions on this thread? It's about "under-rated" players, not players who were brilliant but foreign, you tw*ts. Maldini and Batigol underated ffs, who under-rated them?! They were rightly regarded by all and sundry as the b0ll0cks. Get this thread on track or I will have Betfair ban the lot of you for dragging the forum to a new low. |
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yeah you gotta laugh about maldini or batistuta
 walcott though???? he is the typical problem with British football. all pace no brain. |
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Walcott give us a break unless you mean by under-rated that most people think he is total shiite, when he is just shiite.
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ever is a long time.
I'd put up Paul Bracewell, Paul Lake and Colin Bell. Sure there are plenty of foreign players I've never heard of or long forgotten who could stake a claim. |
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agree with The Knight also - the Friday book should be mandatory reading for any proper football fan.
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Jari Litmanen.
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Danny Murphy.
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Clarence Seedorf one of most under-rated players I've ever seen.
Overshadowed in the British press during his early years by the far-inferior Edgar Davids. Presumably because Davids used to run around a lot and make lots of bad tackles and called himself "The Pitbull". In terms of technical ability and how little mentioned they are in "best player" lists, Seedorf tops it |
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Lucas Leiva
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Berbatov is top top class, a shame Arsene Wenger did not buy him....when loved by the manager he will play as a world beater always!!!
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always thoughht seedorf was just a shyte fetch nd carrier personally, but for most under rated miles ahed of anyone wsas deffo ray wilkins for england , people usded to say he went ideways all thetime(total shyt) and his never give the ball away at any cost has become the most in vogue football tactic. short acurate crsp passing and keepng the ball is now totaly fashionble , nowadays hed be considered "the canines testicles"
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A current player who is underrated in England at the moment is Busquets. In his early 20s he forced his way into the Barca team and the Spainish national team, he's an incredible reader of the game, he can put a tackle in but more importantly his interceptions, pressing and distribution are pretty much flawless. I only know 2 other people who rate him though, it's amazing how ignorant people are of his abilities - if an English lad in his early 20s forced Yaya Toure out of a team then we'd never here the end of him.
Shame he's a bit of a **** of course. |
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Stephane Chapuisat
Alvero Recoba Manuel Rui Costa |
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Robin Friday was the greatest footballer you never saw. Here's why. It is February 1974 and Fourth Division Reading are playing Doncaster Rovers. Friday is standing about 25 yards from goal when he shouts for the ball. As it arrives Friday does something no one expects. He hits the ball first time with the outside of his foot. From a seemingly impossible angle the ball passes the static goalkeeper and then – as intended – swerves at the last minute into the net. The stadium erupts. Two years later Reading play Tranmere Rovers. Friday, by now the town's hero, is about 35 yards from the Rovers goal when the ball hurtles towards him. Somehow he controls it on his chest and then hits the ball with his right foot. Before turning. The velocity of the ball is so powerful that within two seconds it is nestling in the top right-hand corner of the Rovers net. For a few seconds there is absolute silence in the stadium as everyone – players, staff and fans – tries to understand what has just happened. After the game the referee, Clive Thomas, announces: "Even up against the likes of Pele and Cruyff that rates as the best goal I have ever seen."
That year Reading are promoted to the Third Division. Without Robin Friday this would never have happened. Fact. Yet within three months the club have sold him to Cardiff City and six months later Robin has left the game for good. How could such a mercurial talent never play top-flight football or be placed in that great line of 70s artisans, Best, Bowles, etc? Because Robin Friday played life in the same way he played football. Off the field he ran riot in Reading. He smoked spliff, dropped pills, drank heavily and accommodated every woman that came his way. If George Best was football's first pop star, Robin was the game's first rock star. Friday's off-field activities gained such potency that visiting scouts from top clubs – and there were many – refused to countenance signing a man of such unpredictable actions. The summer-long celebrations he undertook after hauling Reading into the Third Division in 1976 then signalled an unstoppable physical decline. Hence the move to Cardiff. On his debut he introduced himself to Fulham's Bobby Moore by squeezing his testicles. The day before he had been arrested for bunking the train from Reading to Cardiff. In addition, Robin played in an era when football was not subject to the blanket media coverage it endures today. The only time Reading appeared on television for example was when the local station filmed them. He remained a hero at his clubs but hidden from the nation. Robin walked out of Cardiff and football in the summer of 1977. Twelve years later he was found dead of a suspected heroin overdose. Hundreds and hundreds of people attended his funeral. In the year 2000 Reading fans overwhelmingly voted him their player of the century. There could be no finer accolade for the man. |
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Teofilo Cubillas.
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Glenn hoddle, Enzo schifo and Bernt shuster
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Roberto Rivellino - the player from whom Maradona got his tricks :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg5j4weQFO8 Fernando Chalana - "O Pequeno Genial" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh8GD_HMgGo |
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Thought I'd be the first to say Jari Litmanen, but Alias has beaten me to it.
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another vote for Paul Bracewell
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Glenn Hoddle was only underrated in Britain. To a man, the rest of the footballing world knew just what he was, one of the greatest players that ever walked the planet. They laughed at our backward football culture, the culture that allowed the most gifted player of his generation to win only 50 caps for his country, and most of them played out of position so that nobodies like Bryan Robson and Ray Wilkins could ocupy the centre.
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Henrik Pederson
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I suppose to be under rated you need to be not rated by some.
Mattias Sammer and Jurgen Kohler were simply fabulous players during the mid 90s as was Danny Blind for Ajax |
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Yes I think the Hoddle situation neatly encapsulates why English football has been so far behind where it should be for the last 40 years.
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wason renteria
ruben castro zvjezdan misimovic sacha reither |
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Mustafa Izzet.
The single reason Leicester City had 4 top 10 finishes in the Prem and 2 league cup wins around the turn of the century. Scorer of sublime goals and the most skillful player to ever wear the shirt. Should have played for one of the big clubs..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYHJZoqvAmk |
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Muzz? Is that you?
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Dont really think Hagi or Stoichkov where under rated.Just not much news on them in uk , no internet etc.Just newspapers really back then.Stoichkov played in a great barca team and won the lot for individual awards and plenty titles/cups.Hagi was regarded as a one of the best players about also.
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1994 United States All Star Team
Belgium Michel Preud'homme Brazil Jorginho Brazil Márcio Santos Italy Paolo Maldini Brazil Dunga Bulgaria Krasimir Balakov Romania Gheorghe Hagi Sweden Tomas Brolin Brazil Romário Bulgaria Hristo Stoichkov Italy Roberto Baggio |
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bobby Charlton is very underrated, was imo the best English player ever, and a top 10 all time world player .
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I'm just going to say a Colchester player - Mark Yeates. Got him from Spurs, went to Middlesbrough.
Quite talented, good but not great. I go to 7 or 8 games a season, and I never, ever saw his head drop. I've got no idea what motivated him when things were going badly, but he never dropped his game, not for a second. He's an Irisher, but if all English players had his attitude, we'd be in clover. |
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Just read the posts above and had to smile about Muzzie Izzet
 His brother Kem is a bit of a Colchester hero. Turns up about three stone overweight every August, and tends to finally get match fit in mid-April, just in time for the end of the season Still, another player whose application cannot be faulted (fitness excluded). Great attitude, nice guy too - lives on the same street as a family friend, and is apparently unerringly pleasant. |
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In the main, Michael Laudrup never seems to get the credit he deserves, but of course the answer is Le Tiss.
Omitted from the 98 World Cup squad by a man who as a player was not fit to blow the froth of his p1ss, despite what misty eyed Spurs fans would have you believe. |
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Cannot believe Carlton Palmer hasn't had a mention, how he never reached 20 england caps is beyond me.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X67sbYpAnoo
Redondo bossing Man Ures midfield with Scholes,Keane and Beckham in it. If you dont watch it all go to 3m.56s |
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Infact watch it all its even better than i remember.On a different planet
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GARETH BARRY
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Paul Scholes.
He's arguably the best midfielder of his generation, and one the best midfielders ever to play the game, yet he never even got near being considered in the European/World footballer of the year awards. England should have built a team around him yet decided to punt him out wide left. A footballing crime. |