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Football has been around for more than a century and the amount of geniuses that have debuted, wielded their skills on the footballing universe and then retired to be remembered as pioneers of the game is also in the hundreds. Due to the same reason, even the most enlightened of us football fanatics often overlook some absolute benchmark setting players in the game we all love. Here is an attempt to make us all as a generation, more aware of 5 underrated legends of Football.
Lev Yashin
Whenever the debate regarding the best goalkeeper of all time arises, I’ve noticed that the likes of Buffon, Kahn, and Schmeichel pop up regularly. Very rarely does anybody mention the man dubbed as the ‘Black Spider’ due to his reflexes and shot stopping which was ahead of its time, to put it mildly.
An Olympic Gold and European Championship winner in his day, Yashin was voted in the FIFA Dream Team of all time in 2002. You would argue if he is really underrated having received such an honor, I would counter that despite his very recent accolade if he is still not the first keeper we mention when the debate arises, we do underrate him.
George Best
The first Rockstar footballer if there was any, George Best was one of the players whose reputation entered the room way before he did. He is considered as a good footballer, but people rarely recognize the genius that he was. He was as suave on the ball as he was with the ladies and he scored on all fronts with full aplomb and without a worry of the public opinion.
1968 was certainly the pinnacle of his career for the ‘5th Beatle’ as he was part of the Manchester United team that won the European Championship and won the Ballon d'Or. One of the biggest disappointments of his career would be the fact that he never appeared in a World Cup, largely down to his choice of playing for the Northern Irish.
Josef ‘Pepi’ Bican
Often we find ourselves looking at the goals scored column to ascertain how well an attacker has done in their career. Recently, Messi and Ronaldo have dominated all the headlines in those regards, and deservedly so. There was once a player though who scored a number of goals which would be impossible to replicate even on your favorite gaming device. The man in question is Austrian striker Josef Bican who scored a whopping 1468 goals in 918 games (friendlies and reserve games included). The Austrian was well known for his goalscoring of course, but was an outstanding athlete as well, clocking in at 10.8 seconds for 100 meters.
The most astounding statistic regarding the striker is probably the fact that even if you disregard the goals scored in friendlies and reserve games, he still remains the highest goalscorer in the history of football. An underrated striker if ever there was one.
Garrincha
If anyone were to be given the ingredients of a spinal deformity and a pair of uneven bowlegged feet, a football player is the last thing you would consider to be the perfect recipe. That was what the legend of Brazil’s bow-legged angel though, a player with dribbling prowess which was so ahead of its time that if you were to watch any of his highlight reels in comparison to any world-class winger at the moment, the only difference would be the lack of colors.
The man was responsible was Brazil’s 1962 World Cup triumph as Pele was injured for the majority of the tournament, unfortunately, it is the other Brazilian who is often credited with the nations’ success.
Hristo Stoichkov
Now, this is a name many of us might be aware of, but very few of us can claim to be aware of his qualities and be able to appreciate them. The Barcelona legend was widely considered as one of the best strikers of his generation and is certainly the best Bulgarian of all time. El Pistolero won the 1994 Ballon d'Or after winning the Golden Boot at the World Cup after leading Bulgaria to a 4th place finish. A part of ‘Dream Team’ involving Cryuff and Romario, the forward who was an equally adept playmaker is often an easily glossed over part of Barcelona folklore.
