The Greatest Ever, Part 2

Last week’s entry strayed from my original intention, which was supposed to be an entry on the best active football player. (Henceforth, American football will be referred to as just that, American football.) Instead, I wrote about the best ever in the other four major sports. I dismissed my Boston area prejudices and went with Ruth, Gretzky, Jordan, and Brown as my picks. Now, I can move on to the best ever in the world’s most popular sport, futbol.
This is a much more difficult pick because football has been played for so long, by so many players, and in so many leagues and competitions. The only thing all these players have in common is that they all are largely ignored by Americans. Growing up here in the Boston area, I followed most closely baseball and hockey, the Red Sox and Bruins. I guess that was because those were the main sports we played after school. As the eighties rolled around, I became more interested in basketball because the Celts were good again, and finally I latched on to the Patriots when I started high school. I had been aware of football (remember, football means soccer) because I attended a New England Teamen match at the old Schaeffer Stadium with my youth soccer team, and of course I knew of Pele, the aged star of the New York Cosmos in the NASL. I had no idea the scope of his fame and ability, however, since I was a typical American boy.
I woke up to the thrill of football in 1994, when the World Cup came to America. I had just graduated from Union College, and was 21 years old. Some of the games were played just a few miles from my hometown, in the same cruddy stadium I’d seen the Teamen–lamest name in pro sports history, by the way, conjuring images of polite English upper crust fuddy-duddies with pinkies extended–play in during the late 70’s. They’d changed the name to Foxboro Stadium, but it still had those uncomfortable metal benches meant for butts considerably slimmer than the average American’s.