As we approach the end of the year it is worth putting together a team of 2008. It is a very subjective choice and I would be surprised if any of us totally agreed on the best eleven players to put in the SoccerNews representative side, but I’ll have a go at making the selection and you can all shoot me down in flames and tell me why I have got it so horribly wrong!
In goal
In goal, there are a few decent candidates. Chelsea’s Petr Cech was really good but won nothing and made a mistake that cost his country dearly at Euro 2008. Without him, we need to look at keepers that won things.
Pepe Reine won the Golden Gloves award, but remained as second choice behind Casillas for Spain. Van Der Sar wan the Premier League and the Champions League and Iker Casillas won La Liga and the European Championships.
It’s a tough choice but Casillas gets my vote.
Back four
The back four has no end of contenders. Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra from Manchester United’s double winning side are all worthy of a place in the squad as are John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho from Chelsea’s nearly double winning side.
Sagna and Clichy at Arsenal made many ‘team of the season’ selections last Summer and Bosingwa at Chelsea might make quite a few at the end of this season.
Maicon at Inter, Daniel Alves at Carles Puyol at Barcelona and Sergio Ramos at Real Madrid are all screaming for selection as is Philipp Lahm from Bayern Munich.
That list is only scratching the surface. Chiellini had a great Euro 2008 and it seems very strange to select a list of the world’s great defenders without nominating anyone from Italy, the home of the magnificent defender.
Anyway, my back four looks like this:
Ramos, Ferdinand, Puyol, Lahm.
Midfield
Into the midfield and I am sure there was some fellow at Manchester United who did quite well this year! Yes, it would be a strange selection if we weren’t to include the Portuguese wing wizardry of Cristiano Ronaldo. Forty-two goals, fantastic skill and tricks and the ability to produce Olympic style tumbling at the faintest of touches make him an automatic choice!
Strangely, after winning the double, it is difficult to think that any of the other Manchester United midfielders that would be nominated in this category. Carrick, Anderson, Scholes, Hargreaves, Nani, Giggs all played their part, but none of them stood out enough to make this squad.
At Chelsea, Lampard, Ballack and Essien were all excellent for their club and Essien may well have made this team if he hadn’t been injured for most of this season so far.
For Liverpool, Mascherano and Gerrard were superb and at Arsenal, Cesc Fabregas came of age.
Pirlo and Gattuso continued to produce the goods at the ageing Milan side and Frank Ribery has developed into the world class player at Bayern Munich that we all thought he would as an under twenty-one international.
The European Championship winning midfield of Barcelona’s Xavi and Iniesta and Villarreal’s Marcos Senna probably all deserve to be in the team, but are difficult to accommodate in my rigid English 4-4-2 system!
Other players who could have made the squad include Wesley Sneijder, Kaka and Quaresma.
It’s a very, very tough choice but I’m going with the following:
Ronaldo, Senna, Xavi, Ribery.
Strikers
The strikers sort of pick themselves. I know that Lionel Messi isn’t a striker but give him a free role playing off the main striker and he will be more effective than anyone else in the world.
The main striker is probably between the two Spaniards who led their country to European glory. Fernando Torres and David Villa.
Many other strikers deserve a mention. Benzema, Rooney, Tevez, Drogba, Ibrahimovich, Klose, Arshavin and even the evergreen Ruud Van Nistelrooy.
For me though there are only two names for the team. Messi and Torres.
So there we have the SoccerNews representative team:
Casillas
Ramos, Ferdinand, Puyol, Lahm
Ronaldo, Senna, Xavi, Ribery
Torres, Messi
It’s not a bad line-up! Over to you. What would you change?
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