Best club team ever

gerd

gerd

Retired Footballer
8 January 2002
Over the moon
KRC Genk, Spurs
I know you can't comparte team from different times...but nevertheless this should be fun...


Well that would be a challenge, what is the best team ever?

A few possibilities.

Il grande Torino (with father Mazzola)
Real Madrid in the 50's (Gento, Di Stefano,...)
Inter Milan in the 60's (with son Mazzola)
Man Utd in the 60's (Charlton, Stiles, Best, Law)
Ajax in the 70's (Cruijff, Neeskens, Muhren, Rep, Haan, Krol)
Bayern Munchen in the 70's (Maier,Beckenbauer, Breitner, Hoeness, Muller)
AC Milan in the 80's (Baresi, Maldini, Donadoni,Rijkaard, Gullit, Van Basten)
Barcelona in the early 90's (Koeman, Guardiola, Stoichkov, Laudrup, Romario)
Crvena Zvezda in the early 90's ( Belodedici, Prosinecki, Mihajlovic, Savicevic, Pancev)
Man Utd of the late nineties (Schmeichel, Giggs, Keane, Scholes, Beckham, Cantona)
Barcelona in 2008/2009 (Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta, Henry, Messi, Eto'o).

What do you people think ????

Did i forgot teams, why no South American teams like River Plate in the 40's (or the 50's), the Santos of Pele ???

The team that impressed me most was Red Star Belgrade, but the civil war in Yugoslavia killed that team...i also remember Dalglish saying that was the best team he ever saw...i tend to agree? But maybe i have an idealized image of that team because it never fullfilled it's promise.
I was also impressed by Ajax, AC Milan and the both Barcelona teams in this list....
 
You've forgotten Liverpool in the 70s/80s as well, though I don't know exact time frames for their great teams.

I genuinely think the Barca of 08-09 would play any other team right off the park, apart from our team from 99, but we'll never know.

I'm not old enough to have seen much of the earlier teams. Only heard of them.
 
You can also add Marseille in CL 92/93 (Barthez, Desailly, Völler, Bokšić and Deschamps) and Benfica in the 60's (Eusébio, Coluna, Torres e Simões).

There is a team in 82 that haven't won nothing but it's considered the team who played the best football ever. Do you know who they are?

Brazil in the 1982 World Cup with Zico, Sócrates, Falcão and Júnior.
 
Oops indeed i forgot Liverpool with Dalglish, Rush, Sounness and Hansen...

I'm not sure about Marseille however...

And Brazil 1982 was indeed a great team, but not a club team.

I"ve hesitated about Benfica with Eusebio and co...
 
well gerd, i think you should add also Trapattoni's juve that was full of 1982's world champions + platini,boniek,laudrup...
they won uefa,cup's winners and european cup, clubs's world cup and many italian leagues...first team to win everything worldwide.
Always hated them,but great team :)

By the way, i 've always been a Red Star's fans like you (i loved Stojkovic), that was a fantastic team but i don't believe they were the best in history...
SInce i watch football i've never seen a team that was impressive like Arrigo Sacchi's Milan, they were aliens landed from the future in a football pitch...probably Ajax in the 70's had the same impact but i wasn't born when they played, so i can't judgewith the same knowledge i use for 80'and 90's teams
 
I've always heard Real Madrid in the 50s was the best, but can't say personally speaking.

For me the team I thought were great was the AC Milan team with the Dutch Lads.


FD
 
I always hear Ranger fans saying they are the most successful club with more trophies than any club in the world 52 titles!
 
I think it's fair not to consider that PSG team...we are talking best club team ever.

There is something to say for the Lisbons lions however...that year (1967) that team won everyting there was to win...it only lasted that season/year, but they were perfect then...

The fantastic Arsenal team that did not loose a match in the league, did not win European silverware (but a season in that league witout a loss surely is memorable...).
 
a few more days and i might expect someone to mention palermo in this thread :LOL:
seriously guys, there are lots of teams that really shouldn't be here....

we can't establish any sort of ranking based on the quality of the football obviously... first, because none of us saw some of theese teams playing enough matches to properly rate them.... (i just saw 2 '70s bayern matches... i never saw il grande torino playing and i watched just some highlights of '50s real madrid)...

besides even if we would actually know each of theese teams enough to compare their football, we would discover it's pretty much impossible to do it.
let's take il grande torino, the '30s juve or the '50s real madrid, for example. they were some of the greatests teams in the history of the game, as they completely ruled the european scenario for 5 years (il grande torino was the world's best team from 1943 till the tragedy of superga; that glorious juventus was on top from 1930 to 1935, real madrid was on top from 1955 to 1960). theese teams domination was way longer than modern teams domination (when u think that the usual living cycle of a team is 3 years nowadays..) and the concept of "domination" itself had quite a different meaning. we're not talking about teams like today's man utd or barcelona, which had some great seasons with league wins a champions league and some CL finals \semi finals.
that torino, that juve and that real madrid completely dominated each and every competition they joined for 5 years... they did what barcelona did this season.... but they did it for 5 years in a row (just to put things in perspective).
yet i'm quite confident each of theese glorious teams would be completely dismantled by this barcelona. but that's pretty obvious as it was a long time ago... football was different, the players were different, the game as it was conceived was different.... herrera, the dutch revolution and sacchi were yet to come....
so once esablished we can't compare the quality of the football played by teams in different eras, we can come to the conclusion that the only thing we can base our reasoning on is the impact theese teams had on their own "era".

and this logic (wich is the only one we can apply to teams which played in different periods) will bring us to a much shorter list.

the 1930/1935 juventus team
the 1944/1949 torino team
the 1955/1960 real madrid team
the 1963/1967 inter team
the 1970/1973 ajax team
the 1974/1977 bayern munich team
the 1987/1991 milan team.

and that's it. no eusebio's benfica, no crujff's barcelona, no red star belgrade, no '60s man utd.... just theese 7 teams. eusebio's benfica was a great attacking team.... but they didn't bring something new to football and their european domination lasted for about 2 years. as a matter of fact, the main reason why that team became glorious is because they beated puskas's real madrid in the CL final.... awesome achievement, but i'm afraid that's not enough to give em a place among the greatests football teams of all times.

also crujff's barcelona was a nice team (the team was great, the coach was a "more show than go" kinda guy.... a bit like mourinho.... maybe slightly better than mou).... they won a lot in spain.... but they didn't "change the game" and they didn't dominate the european scenario at all..... as a matter of fact they were repeatedly humiliated in europe, by both sacchi's and capello's milan. and since i didn't put capello's milan in that list, i'm definitely not gonna put crujff's barcelona.

sure we might even add that barcelona team, aswell as we could add eusebio's benfica or charlton's man utd...... but then, even before those teams, we should add to that list the late '70s paisley's liverpool, the early 80s trapattoni's juventus, capello's milan (in that list there is just the 1987/1991 milan, wich was sacchi's milan)....
and mentioning also all theese teams would be unfair to those 7 history-makers teams i mentioned earlier. Coz those 7 teams had a much bigger impact on the game than any other team in the history of the game.
those 7 teams changed football as we knew it, their coaches modified the whole core concept of the game. those teams are cornerstones people normally use to identify the different eras in football. and that's more than we can say about every other team mentioned in this thread.

puskas's real madrid was the "patentee" of the spanish football school. the orange revolution in the '70s brought in the concept of "movement without the ball".
Herrera invented the zone pressing, pretty much revolutionized the whole concept of defending and changed for ever the players training methods.
Sacchi brought football to its highests levels. his impact on modern football is something so deep that u can't really find any tactical aspect of the game he didn't change for ever. he also built a team wich was so unbelievably close to perfection that no one, no other coach in the last 20 years was able to even get close to him and his milan.

the mid 90s lippi's juventus, the early 2000s ancelotti's milan, and last man utd team (wich just ended a glorious cycle and its now trying to start a new one), they were all great teams, but as i said for the other teams some of u guys mentioned, it would be unfair to pretend theese teams were on the same level of those 7 historic teams.

and please, let's not mention this current barcelona team! this was an awesome season for barca. they're a great team any football fan would love to watch playing, and they certainly deserve the success they got..... but come on, this is just the 1st season of barcelona's new cycle.... we can't already compare this barca to the 2006/2008 man utd team (wich proved to be sucessful all along its 3 years cycle), let alone comparing it to the greatests teams in history..... that's just ridiculous.
 
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Good post ben...as always...
I largely agree perhaps the only team you did not mention was the great River Plate team (was it from the 40's or the 50's, i don't remember) who changed South-American football (the first team to be really successfull with stylish football (there is an Argentinian term for it, but i don't remember that one...).
 
Only Ajax changed football with its "total football" concept.

And I respect that team much. Because when teams like panathinaikos used money and dictators to reach the final, Ajax taught them a good lesson instead of accepting their money to lose the cup. That needs guts to be done.
 
The_Special_One said:
You can also add Marseille in CL 92/93 (Barthez, Desailly, Völler, Bokšić and Deschamps) and Benfica in the 60's (Eusébio, Coluna, Torres e Simões).

There is a team in 82 that haven't won nothing but it's considered the team who played the best football ever. Do you know who they are?

Brazil in the 1982 World Cup with Zico, Sócrates, Falcão and Júnior.
Click to expand...

I think OM of 91 are better, with Papin, Waddle, Pelé, Mozer, Cantona, Stojkovic, Tigana, Boli and Amoros.

for the best team of all time, i think it's Rel with Di Stefano, Kopa etc... the Zidane one with Ronaldo, Makelele are great too and actual Barca of course. I don't speak about Milan 90 because OM always beat this team :SMUG:.
 
The_Special_One said:
You can also add Marseille in CL 92/93 (Barthez, Desailly, Völler, Bokšić and Deschamps) and Benfica in the 60's (Eusébio, Coluna, Torres e Simões).

There is a team in 82 that haven't won nothing but it's considered the team who played the best football ever. Do you know who they are?

Brazil in the 1982 World Cup with Zico, Sócrates, Falcão and Júnior.
Click to expand...

Yeah. With Zico in the team, who is currently the coach of Olympiacos, they were definitely a great team.
 
timtim91 said:
Can't believe ppl are even trying to discuss this

5 CL-titles in a row, best club= Real Madrid

56,57,58,59,60 like oNeberlin mentioned

End of discussion
Click to expand...

Very bold statement, but to be expected from a Real fan, I guess.
They're definitely a team to be considered, but the competition they dominated back then wasn't nearly as competitive as it was decades later.

I agree with Lo Zios list, cept I'd really add the current Barca team.

Choosing the very best I'd go with Munichs Beckenbauer lead squad, but that goes without saying, right? ;)
The mentioned teams are all pretty much on par in my opinion.
 
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lo zio said:
a few more days and i might expect someone to mention palermo in this thread :LOL:
seriously guys, there are lots of teams that really shouldn't be here....

we can't establish any sort of ranking based on the quality of the football obviously... first, because none of us saw some of theese teams playing enough matches to properly rate them.... (i just saw 2 '70s bayern matches... i never saw il grande torino playing and i watched just some highlights of '50s real madrid)...

besides even if we would actually know each of theese teams enough to compare their football, we would discover it's pretty much impossible to do it.
let's take il grande torino, the '30s juve or the '50s real madrid, for example. they were some of the greatests teams in the history of the game, as they completely ruled the european scenario for 5 years (il grande torino was the world's best team from 1943 till the tragedy of superga; that glorious juventus was on top from 1930 to 1935, real madrid was on top from 1955 to 1960). theese teams domination was way longer than modern teams domination (when u think that the usual living cycle of a team is 3 years nowadays..) and the concept of "domination" itself had quite a different meaning. we're not talking about teams like today's man utd or barcelona, which had some great seasons with league wins a champions league and some CL finals \semi finals.
that torino, that juve and that real madrid completely dominated each and every competition they joined for 5 years... they did what barcelona did this season.... but they did it for 5 years in a row (just to put things in perspective).
yet i'm quite confident each of theese glorious teams would be completely dismantled by this barcelona. but that's pretty obvious as it was a long time ago... football was different, the players were different, the game as it was conceived was different.... herrera, the dutch revolution and sacchi were yet to come....
so once esablished we can't compare the quality of the football played by teams in different eras, we can come to the conclusion that the only thing we can base our reasoning on is the impact theese teams had on their own "era".

and this logic (wich is the only one we can apply to teams which played in different periods) will bring us to a much shorter list.

the 1930/1935 juventus team
the 1944/1949 torino team
the 1955/1960 real madrid team
the 1963/1967 inter team
the 1970/1973 ajax team
the 1974/1977 bayern munich team
the 1987/1991 milan team.

and that's it. no eusebio's benfica, no crujff's barcelona, no red star belgrade, no '60s man utd.... just theese 7 teams. eusebio's benfica was a great attacking team.... but they didn't bring something new to football and their european domination lasted for about 2 years. as a matter of fact, the main reason why that team became glorious is because they beated puskas's real madrid in the CL final.... awesome achievement, but i'm afraid that's not enough to give em a place among the greatests football teams of all times.

also crujff's barcelona was a nice team (the team was great, the coach was a "more show than go" kinda guy.... a bit like mourinho.... maybe slightly better than mou).... they won a lot in spain.... but they didn't "change the game" and they didn't dominate the european scenario at all..... as a matter of fact they were repeatedly humiliated in europe, by both sacchi's and capello's milan. and since i didn't put capello's milan in that list, i'm definitely not gonna put crujff's barcelona.

sure we might even add that barcelona team, aswell as we could add eusebio's benfica or charlton's man utd...... but then, even before those teams, we should add to that list the late '70s paisley's liverpool, the early 80s trapattoni's juventus, capello's milan (in that list there is just the 1987/1991 milan, wich was sacchi's milan)....
and mentioning also all theese teams would be unfair to those 7 history-makers teams i mentioned earlier. Coz those 7 teams had a much bigger impact on the game than any other team in the history of the game.
those 7 teams changed football as we knew it, their coaches modified the whole core concept of the game. those teams are cornerstones people normally use to identify the different eras in football. and that's more than we can say about every other team mentioned in this thread.

puskas's real madrid was the "patentee" of the spanish football school. the orange revolution in the '70s brought in the concept of "movement without the ball".
Herrera invented the zone pressing, pretty much revolutionized the whole concept of defending and changed for ever the players training methods.
Sacchi brought football to its highests levels. his impact on modern football is something so deep that u can't really find any tactical aspect of the game he didn't change for ever. he also built a team wich was so unbelievably close to perfection that no one, no other coach in the last 20 years was able to even get close to him and his milan.

the mid 90s lippi's juventus, the early 2000s ancelotti's milan, and last man utd team (wich just ended a glorious cycle and its now trying to start a new one), they were all great teams, but as i said for the other teams some of u guys mentioned, it would be unfair to pretend theese teams were on the same level of those 7 historic teams.

and please, let's not mention this current barcelona team! this was an awesome season for barca. they're a great team any football fan would love to watch playing, and they certainly deserve the success they got..... but come on, this is just the 1st season of barcelona's new cycle.... we can't already compare this barca to the 2006/2008 man utd team (wich proved to be sucessful all along its 3 years cycle), let alone comparing it to the greatests teams in history..... that's just ridiculous.
Click to expand...

but are we talking about the best team over five years, or the best team in one season... I think we need to define "best club team ever" even those real madrid teams back in the day didnt have the same players year after year did they? So I suggest we just take one season and which club team was the best within one season.... I think this opens it up for a larger debate and not just to teams who dominated over five years... Also dont you think todays three year cycle is the 50's 5 to 10 year cycle? They didnt have bosman rules back then did they?
 
Best club team in one season: no discussion possible: The Lisbon Lions: Celtic in 1967. They won everything there was to win. What makes it more peculiar is that all these players came from within a range of less than 50 miles from the Celtic stadium.

So gomito, i think you need to look further than just one season...
 
gomito#10 said:
but are we talking about the best team over five years, or the best team in one season... I think we need to define "best club team ever" even those real madrid teams back in the day didnt have the same players year after year did they? So I suggest we just take one season and which club team was the best within one season.... I think this opens it up for a larger debate and not just to teams who dominated over five years... Also dont you think todays three year cycle is the 50's 5 to 10 year cycle? They didnt have bosman rules back then did they?
Click to expand...

every year there are usually a couple of "new entries" in every team (although 20, 30 years ago the market wasn't as dynamic and frenzy as it is today) but the core of a team (and by "core" i don't just mean the backbone) usually stay for the entire cycle of the team.... infact we tend to define the "life cycle" of a team by considering those 3 years during wich time the core of the team is the same. and u're right when u say that the current 3 years life-cycle is equivalent to the '50s 5 years cycle. :))

anyhow i believe it would be extremely deceptive to base a judgment over a single season, as the "form" factor gets much more important when u consider such a short time.
besides, through his life-cycle, a team gets to face challenges they don't face in their first season (the sense of fullfilment being the most important).
and then there's another important thing to take into account. as the years go passing by, other teams get to know a top team gameplan.... they get accustomed to it and spot its weaknesses.... that implies a whole new set of challenges for both the players and the coach. and this is another test u got to pass, in order to be considered as one of the best teams in history.

this barca team still didn't have the chance to prove itself in theese challenges, as that's just their second season. when this barca team's life-cycle will be over, then we will be able to tell wheter this was a "just" a great team or one of the greatests teams in history. :))

rentalkid said:
Choosing the very best I'd go with Munichs Beckenbauer lead squad, but that goes without saying, right?
The mentioned teams are all pretty much on par in my opinion.
Click to expand...
yeah i couldn't really pick one among those 7 teams either, as each one of them deserves to be considered "the greatest" for different reasons and from different perspectives. :))
 
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There is another factor that has changed. Today only big (= rich) clubs can have big teams for longer tan one season.

The two last "litle" teams to win the CL were Ajax and Porto.

Ajax: Vander Sar, Frank en Ronald De Boer, Kluivert, Davids, Overmars, Finidi, Kanu, Litmanen (the best one)...they all left for better teams within two years.

Porto: Deco, Maniche, Carvalho, Paulo Fereira, Nuno Valente, Costinha, Derlei, Alberto Carlos...they all left the season after they won the CL.

Those two teams had the the potential to become big teams, but the clubs lacked the money to hold the players...
 
gerd said:
There is another factor that has changed. Today only big (= rich) clubs can have big teams for longer tan one season.

The two last "litle" teams to win the CL were Ajax and Porto.

Ajax: Vander Sar, Frank en Ronald De Boer, Kluivert, Davids, Overmars, Finidi, Kanu, Litmanen (the best one)...they all left for better teams within two years.

Porto: Deco, Maniche, Carvalho, Paulo Fereira, Nuno Valente, Costinha, Derlei, Alberto Carlos...they all left the season after they won the CL.

Those two teams had the the potential to become big teams, but the clubs lacked the money to hold the players...
Click to expand...
i think this is my point, even the big teams cant hold onto the likes of ronaldo... there is always greener grass these days, not so much back in the day
 
Ben, thanks. I really like your putting things in perspective. It's not that you say anything revolutionary or that i haven't thought, i just haven't yet gathered my thoughts so coherently.

The most important thing would be, indeed - whether that team brought something to the game. It takes guts and creativity to come up with something new.

But what's spectacular for me and what decides we MUST look at cycles [even though this leaves my beloved Barcelona out of the list] is the motivation factor. Recent example - Ronaldinho's Barcelona. Good team, won a double then even its star lost motivation and got fat+ the adversaries learned to read Rijkaard. These 2 factors killed it.

Messi's team is going through the same challenge. Look at the Villarreal match and see how in the 60th minute the players looked resigned with a draw and their heads in the ground. Up needs to step Guardiola if he is to save this "best start in Barca's La Liga history".

No imagine how hard must it be [even with the slightly weaker competition the old days had] to stay motivated and on top for years and years. THAT's to be admired.

P.S. - Ben, you forgot Olympiakos '00s!
 
yep, your right mate (btw, thanks for yuour kind words :)) ).
that's why confirming yourself as a champion is always harder then becoming champion for the first time.

because it's tough to mantain that "mental edge", that hunger.... and also because your opponents get to know u better and better, as time go passing by. :))
 
West Ham 1997 ("El Classico Campione Del Diablos"):

Paulo Alves, Mike Newell, Iain Dowie, Keith Rowland
 
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