In the top 125? Do you know who he is?
To mark Fifa’s centennial celebrations, Fifa decided to publish a book of the 100 greatest living footballers, past and present at the time it was created. This was a great idea but turned into abit of a farce and nothing more than a PR stunt for Fifa. They decided to give the job to the great Pele but aswell as being one of the greatest players of all time, Pele is an ambassador for Fifa and it was evident there was more to this list than the actual 100 greatest players in the world. For a start, Pele would not decide on 100 so the list was called the 125 best players! To add to this, there are 2 women in the 125 and also many players from some of the smaller nations who have acheived little in the game and not even considered to be that good. On the list there are an amazing 21 nations that are repreasented by just 1 player each. Surely this list is not an accurate reflection of the 125 greatest footballers at this time and was done for political reasons by Fifa and Pele himself. It has been suggested that some of the players in the list had just played well in the 2002 wolrd cup to get into the list. Here are some of the more questionable players…
Japan: Hidetoshi Nakata.
Mexico: Hugo Sanchez.
Paraguay: Romerito.
Peru: Teofilo Cubillas.
Poland: Zbigniew Boniek.
Russia (incl. former Soviet Union): Rinat Disayev.
Senegal: El Hadji Diouf.
South Korea: Hong Myung-Bo.
Turkey: Emre Belozoglu, Rustu Recber.
United States: Michelle Akers, Mia Hamm.
