By Far The Greatest Team

The football blog for fans of all clubs

Opinion

The Worst World Class Player: Heat Three

By Eion SmithPosted on Posted in Opinion

Inspired by the 5 Live World Football Phone-In and a comment Tim Vickery made, I’m running this week long series to figure out just who is the worst world class player in the game today. It’s a bit of an odd question as we look to find the worst of the best. Tim said Carlos Tevez but I disagreed and polled others in the FMG family on who are the world class players today.

We got to a list of 66 which we then whittled down to the worst 16 who you, the fine readers of BFTGT, will vote for on Twitter each day this week. There will be four heats with the top two progressing to the semis then the top two from each semi to the final vote with the winner announced Monday 29 January.

Simple enough? Good. Let’s see who is in the third vote:

Samuel Umtiti (Barcelona/France)

Barcelona fans love Umtiti who has been so good that he’s forced Javier Mascherano out of the side and made the club miss him when he’s been injured.

Strong, quick and surprisingly adept on the ball, Umtiti is everything you want from a modern centre back. Is he the best centre back in the world though? Probably not and, as such, he’s been included on this list. Vote for others if you don’t agree with that.

Christian Eriksen (Tottenham/Denmark)

Spurs fans put down the pitchforks and torches and hear me out.

That Christian Eriksen made it on the initial 66 is probably kind. I left out people like Firmino, Azpilicueta and Mahrez and Eriksen is on this vote for reasons many others are: you can argue against his ‘world class’ status.

The Dane is a glorious footballer and integral to Spurs but there’s a reason Barcelona went for Coutinho over Eriksen once they became flush with funds.

David Luiz (Chelsea/Brazil)

David Luiz is world class. No, seriously. Stop laughing.

He’s a wonderful defender when he focuses. Strong, quick and aggressive. He’s also got brilliant technique and a hell of a shot on him. The wrap on Luiz is that he loses focus and has moments of sheer stupidity which can prove costly.

Radja Nainggolan (Roma/Belgium)

Another who has been long linked with the Premier League, Nainggolan is a striking player to look at and to watch.

He hustles and bustles around the pitch with an intensity like few others. There’s bite in his tackle, a cannon in his right boot and a swagger that draws fans to him. But, is he really the first name you think of when you say world class?

To vote, simply choose your option from the tweet below. RT it and tell us if you agree with the players involved in this heat and stay tuned tomorrow for the next heat.

Scroll to top