Most overrated players in history?

I wouldn't know if they are arrogant, biased etc because I do not follow their press, but if they are like that, it would be more justified than England now if you look at the quality of the present national teams. World Cup winners excluding Uruguay and England - Germany, France, Spain, Brazil, Italy and Argentina. All of those 6 nations currently have a better team than England and quite rightly will expect to do well next year.. But eh - "It's Coming Home", I guess

 

The 'England expects' thing is a canard, an outdated myth.

Martin Samuel sums it up well:

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Martin Samuel talks a lot of sense, and he summed that up well there. Surprising to hear that other stuff from a Scot btw. However, like I said previously - not every English national team supporter will expect them to win the world cup, but if England get to Brazil and they start doing reasonably well and reach a stage like the quarter finals - all you will hear from their media is that "it's coming home", "go on and win this * thing" then when they get knocked out it's the usual "same old England, bottlers", "We never expected anything from this England team". It was exactly like this in Euro 2012 before the Italians put them out.

 

From the Sun perhaps, but not from credible journalists.

Every nation has a gutter-press, England is no exception.

 

Victor Valdes and Sergio Ramos are much more over rated than any English player mentioned in this thread. Their respective teams have about 70% possession in most of their games and they still both manage to make glaring errors in every game they play.

Ramos in particular makes about 5 or 6 positional errors every single game and is often bailed out or it goes unpunished. He's a shocking centre half. I couldn't believe it when so many people on here put him on their world 11s. He wouldn't even be in my Real Madrid 11. Such a * footballer.

 

Lampard,Gaza.

 

Pique's been a ropey the last couple years.

 

Agreed,dirty * as well

 

No disrespect to you Fawlty, because you are correct in regard to Englands real ability and standing as well as the poor Journalism of most the press and media. But the FA Chairman should be minded that they haven't even qualified as yet, before the usual ''Englands going to win it'' guff comes to the fore again. Perhaps a touch of realism from him and others is too much to bear. Due to the match conditions in Brazil its highly unlikely Germany apart, that a Northern European side is going to win there.

 

beckham getting a lot of unjust criticism in his thread. he was a good dribbler, had a great workrate, was a great crosser and could take fantastic set pieces.

 

Aye, I liked Beckham. He was a class player and people forget that he was a key component at some time or another of arguably the three biggest clubs in the world. Seems a down to earth guy as well, I don't get where all the animosity towards him comes from.

 

Owen.

 

Post 2004, yes. Pre04, nope. 158 in 297 games for Liverpool. Heck, he won the Balon d'or

 

Owen was a great player early in his Liverpool days. He wasn't exactly poor at Real Madrid either giving the way he was deployed. He should have gone on to be one of the greats.

His problem was that he was played far too much early on in his career. He played a huge amounts of games for Liverpool early on and suffered some terrible injuries (remember the game against Sweden?) that cut his time short.

'While I was playing every game available to me there was another young kid in the Liverpool academy called Steven Gerrard who was showing huge potential.

‘Unlike me, who was playing 80 games a season, Steve couldn’t stay fit. I am convinced that this was to his advantage in the long run. His body just needed time to grow into itself and at that time it couldn’t take the stresses and strains of football." - Owen

Compare his goals to games ratio (118 in 216) alongside that of Fowler (120 in 236) and 40 goals in 89 games for England and you can see he wasn't overrated.

 

Always thought the same about Ramos and Pepe. 2 * bombscares and Ramos a dirty * as well.

 

Always thought wingers good games to games played ratio was inconsistent but Giggs has been at the top playing consistently well for over 20 years now.

 

Most successful thread I've ever started - thanks folks:icon_mrgreen:.

Certainly progressed since I was on, partially diverging from the thread topic for a bit.

Lots of interesting ones on here.

Chamberlain is overrated, I would give it a year but I think we have saw what he is

Sterling is still a diamond in the rough and although he is too eager just now and makes rash decisions, not to mention the fact his touch/shot is appalling at times, I believe he has strong potential.

Gascoigne was overrated after Newcastle and Tottenham. Never lived up to his fullest potential because he was never an athlete and floundered in a team that reveled in the ease of the league and were more than happy to do 'just enough' whilst drinking themselves silly. Yes, I am speaking about Sevco.

Pepe is overrated. Ramos isn't (I dunno why, that's just the feeling I get watching them).

Beckham wasn't overrated, he was just talked about so much and became more of an off field media icon and 'product', rather than a footballer, that people believe he is overrated. When in actual fact, nobody really talked him up to be more than he really was: a good dribbler, with a good touch and the guy who could pick out the perfect cross, executing it 9/10 times.
That's fact. Nobody believed he was up there with Zidane et al.

Finally, the English media ruin it for their poor players :icon_mrgreen::smiley-laughing002:

 

I'd say Valdes is underrated.

Yeah he's been awful since 2011.

 

I do agreee but he's caught between a rock and a hard place in my view. Imagine the headlines: 'Bernstein writes off England,' 'Negative chairman blasts World Cup hopes,' etc.

They've got to keep up the pretence of being able to compete, if not, what have they got?

:smiley-laughing002:

 

Valdes is underrated. Everyone slates him, he's a fantastic shot stopper and a nrillaint sweeper keeper with concentration issues.

Not my favourite player but he takes some amount of criticism.