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FourFourTwos 50 Best Football Teams Ever: 30-21
30. Flamengo 1980-83
The Flamengo side that won the Copa Libertadores and beat Liverpool 3-0 in the Intercontinental Cup in 1981 is often reductively described as the genius of Zico and 10 others.
Zico, aka the white Pele, was the most gifted Brazilian footballer since the original Pele, able to somersault in the air and score with a backwards overhead volley. Adoring Flamengo fans would jokingly wish each other “Happy Christmas” on March 3, his birthday.
Uncomfortable with such reverence, Zico – who was 28 during Flamengo’s annus mirabilis – knew his side couldn’t have conquered the world without the flair of attacking right-back Leandro and the versatility of Junior, who was equally at home at left-back or left midfield even though he favoured his right foot.
Converting many of the chances Zico’s magic created was Joao Batista Nunes, who rejoined Flamengo in 1980 and scored 93 goals in 195 games, including two against Liverpool. His first, a nonchalant finish after a defence-bypassing ball from Zico, illustrated what made them such a deadly combination.
29. Nottingham Forest 1977-80
Has any team proved so much greater than the sum of its parts than the Nottingham Forest that won successive European Cups under Brian Clough and Peter Taylor? This dynamic duo perfected a remorseless, entertaining and mystifying good cop/bad cop act that filled their players with existential dread.
Devastatingly efficient, Forest shipped 24 goals in 1977/78 and became the fourth – and last – team to win the league the season after winning promotion. They were as self-confident in Europe, inspired by unseating reigning champions Liverpool in the first round in 1979.
Taylor’s eerie prescience helped – he correctly predicted Forest would beat Dynamo Berlin in the 1980 quarter-final after spotting how apprehensive the German players looked in the City Ground car park. Good in possession, Forest were outstanding without the ball, as they proved with two 1-0 victories in European Cup finals against Malmo and Hamburg.
Gunter Netzer praised midfielder John McGovern’s ability to control games. John Robertson, the team’s Picasso, impressed the great Azzurri coach Enzo Bearzot who beamed: “When he has the ball, he can create something.”
Gary Mills best encapsulated Forest’s astonishing overachievement: only 18, he was shifted into midfield after 10 minutes to stifle Hamburg with a 4-5-1 in the 1980 final. Clough feigned tactical ignorance but this tweak saved Forest. Mills performed magnificently, possibly because whatever Hamburg threw at him couldn’t be as terrifying as the wrath of Clough or Taylor.
28. Budapest Honved 1950-55
Honved 9-7 MTK. Such scorelines – and this 16-goal thriller was a local derby – explain why, in the mid-1950s, Honved were the team the whole world wanted to watch. Coached by Gusztav Sebes, the architect of the Mighty Magyar side that beat England 6-3 at Wembley – and backed by the Hungarian army – Honved became an R&D lab where new tactics were honed, inspiring Brazil’s World Cup winners in 1958 and Rinus Michel’s Total Football.
With their movement off the ball, interchanging positions and clever passing, Honved played a kind of football that seemed to come from outer space. They could only do so because Sebes could call on such greats as Ferenc Puskas, a one-footed genius who played every game in his head before it happened; Sandor Kocsis, a supremely gifted striker; visionary deep-lying playmaker Jozsef Bozsik; effervescent winger Zoltan Czibor and prototypical sweeper-keeper Gyula Grosics. One of the side’s lesser-known geniuses, defender-cum-midfielder Gyula Lorant, pioneered the use of zonal marking as a coach in Germany.
They dominated the Hungarian league, winning five titles in seven years, but one of the hottest episodes in the Cold War destroyed the team – the 1956 Hungarian uprising erupted just as Honved had begun their first European Cup campaign.
In normal circumstances, Puskas and his team-mates would have been confident of overturning a 3-2 first-leg defeat by Athletic Bilbao in Budapest, but, with their homeland in turmoil, the distracted players opted to play the second in Brussels where, as the failed revolution in their home city turned bloody, they drew 3-3. After such an inconclusive finale, the team disintegrated. Despite this modest success in continental competition, they had made their mark.
27. France 1996-2000
France had a fallow patch after the break-up of their glorious mid-’80s team, missing the tournaments in 1988, 1990 and 1994 while exiting Euro 92 winless.
But a new breed was emerging, with an international flavour. Eric Cantona’s year-long suspension in 1995 handed the playmaker baton to 22-year-old son of Algerian immigrants Zinedine Zidane, alongside PSG schemer Youri Djorkaeff (son of an Armenian and a Kalmyk Pole).
Their guile was given a platform by a strong defence including the classy Laurent Blanc, powerful Lilian Thuram (born in Guadeloupe), Milan rock Marcel Desailly (born in Accra) and miniature Basque overlapper Bixente Lizarazu, all protected by midfield water-carrier Didier Deschamps. Aime Jacquet’s team reached the Euro 96 semis, conceding just twice in five games; then, conceding just twice in seven, they only went and won the World Cup on home soil.
It was a triumph for French multiculturalism, le mot juste being “Black-blanc-beur” (the latter a non-derogatory term for the North African diaspora). Replacing hopeless centre-forward Stephane Guivarc’h with young bucks Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet, they triumphed at Euro 2000, dramatically beating Italy thanks to Sylvain Wiltord’s injury-time equaliser and Trezeguet’s golden goal.
26. Borussia M’gladbach 1970-79
The story of this team is a miracle. Not even the success of Brian Clough’s Forest was as improbable as the rise of this small, provincial club.
Or maybe it wasn’t a miracle but destiny? After all, there seems to be no better explanation for the fact that during the short post-war era when local boys still played for their hometown clubs instead of looking for riches elsewhere, no fewer than five men who would win the 1972 European Championship with West Germany were born within a 10-mile radius around a town considerably smaller than Nottingham. Jupp Heynckes, Günter Netzer, Berti Vogts, Horst-Dieter Höttges and Erwin Kremers – they were all Mönchengladbach lads.
These players formed the side that put Borussia on the map in the 1960s. But the man who it took it a step further, who created not just a good team but a myth that captures the imagination to this day was Hennes Weisweiler, the coach. The first reason was that he played an attacking game so daring that even maverick Netzer pleaded with him to be more defensive. The second was that he eventually had to sell his stars (such as Netzer to Real Madrid) but always found new, cheap talent where no one else bothered to look (such as Allan Simonsen in Denmark).
For one glorious decade this team held its own against the great Bayern side that won three consecutive European Cups, winning more Bundesliga titles than the Bavarians. It was a feat midfielder Horst Wohlers would later describe as a ‘miracle’.
25. Juventus 1994-98
When Juventus won the Champions League in Rome in 1996, players wept with joy. Marcello Lippi’s Bianconeri were indisputably the best in Europe – they had swept aside Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid before beating Ajax on penalties after winning the first of three Serie A titles in four years. They would also reach two more Champions league finals, losing both.
Yet this golden era was tarnished by revelations that players were routinely given prescription drugs and antidepressants, even if they didn’t need them.
Does this negate the team’s feats? One club official declared that anyone who thought so was a “village idiot”. Lippi’s team was brilliantly engineered, featuring the finest forwards in Europe – Alessandro Del Piero, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Alen Boksic, Pippo Inzaghi, Gianluca Vialli and Zinedine Zidane.
Juve’s engine room was almost as impressive: Didier Deschamps and Antonio Conte pressed tirelessly in midfield, full-backs Gianluca Pessotto and Moreno Torricelli were tactically adroit and centre-back Ciro Ferrara was a one-man defensive masterclass. In goal, Angelo Peruzzi – though no Buffon – was good enough to save two spot-kicks in the 1996 final shootout.
24. Preston North End 1888-89
Preston North End were football’s first great team. Innovators, agitators, the original Invincibles. They paid players before professionalism even existed, pioneered a previously unseen ‘pass and move’ game when dribbling was all the rage and were among the first clubs to look beyond their local area for top talent.
The Lilywhites’ achievements in the 1888/89 season alone would have made them contenders for a place among football’s greatest-ever sides. Unbeaten in the inaugural First Division with a goal difference of +59 across just 22 games, their win ratio would have given them 100 points in the Premier League era, five more that Jose Mourinho’s record-breaking 2004/05 Chelsea.
They completed the Double without conceding a goal in five FA Cup matches. All this in a season of dwindling crowds amid rumours Jack the Ripper had headed north in search of fresh blood.
They retained their league title the following season and finished runners-up in the next three, but like all great teams, North End found that they were there to be shot at. There were newspaper stories about drunken womanising. Goal-a-game England striker Johnny Goodall was one of many Invincibles lured away by bigger wages. Fellow forwards James ‘Little Demon’ Ross and Fred Dewhurst had their lives cut short by illness soon after.
Trailblazing chairman Billy Sudell (who doubled up as a default manager in those days) was jailed for embezzling funds from his cotton mills to pay his stars. But while success was short-lived, few clubs have created such a lasting legacy.
23. Boca Juniors 1998-2003
When Carlos Bianchi took over in 1998, Boca were distinctly average. They’d won just one minor trophy in 15 years, their back-to-back Copa Libertadores victories of the late-’70s a distant memory.
Time for an overhaul. Bianchi trimmed a bloated squad and redeployed the classic Boca system: 4-3-1-2, with an eccentric goalkeeper, hard-working defenders, a disciplined midfield, all orchestrated by a mercurial No.10 (Juan Riquelme) and spearheaded by a predatory goalscorer (Martin Palermo).
It was simple, direct and intense – and it worked. Just like their famous sides of the ‘60s and ‘70s, if they scored, they won. “It was practically impossible for the other side to equalise when we were winning to nil,” recalls holding midfielder Mauricio Serna. “And we knew that if we were ordered in the back, our goal would eventually come.”
This solidity helped them go undefeated in 40 league matches, breaking Racing Club’s record (39) set in the 1960s. They won the Libertadores in 2000, 2001, 2003 and reached another final in 2004, plus four league titles and two Intercontinental Cups against Real Madrid and Milan. The club experienced a revolution in all areas, from youth academy to global marketing, and became one of Argentina’s most lucrative commercial brands. Bianchi transformed Boca from popular losers to dogged winners. The team of Buenos Aires’ working class had become a global enterprise.
22. Estudiantes 1967-71
The Argentines won three successive Copa Libertadores from 1968, but it’s the all-consuming gamesmanship for which they are best remembered – future Argentina manager and then-practising gynecologist Carlos Bilardo used to stab opponents with pins during matches.
To Estudiantes, their roughhouse tactics felt necessary after a lengthy period of domination from Argentina’s Big Five (Boca, River, Independiente, Racing and San Lorenzo). They broke the quintet’s ruling with the title in 1967.
Their first Copa success in 1968 was a welcome achievement for a team outside of all-conquering Buenos Aires. They followed that up with an Intercontinental Cup victory over Manchester United in which Nobby Stiles was sent off in the first leg, before a particularly bad-tempered second resulted in George Best punching Jose Hugo Medina as both men were shown red (and Juan Seba Veron’s father, Juan Ramon, scored).
In the end, Estudiantes’s bastardry caught up with them: in 1969, a heinous Intercontinental Cup final second leg against Milan resulted in the entire team being arrested under the orders of Argentina president Juan Carlos Ongania. Three players – Alberto Poletti, Ramon Aguirre Suarez and Eduardo Lujan Manera – actually served time in prison.
This was revolutionary football of a different kind – “anti-football”, as it soon became known. But one league triumph and three consecutive major continental titles speak for themselves.
21. Barcelona 1988-94
Still the possession-hungry model by which the Catalans base their game, Johan Cruyff’s Dream Team brought about a total football revolution at the Camp Nou and beyond.
They may have been subsequently outshone by Pep Guardiola’s cohort, but the current Manchester City manager – a member of Cruyff’s squad from 1990 onwards – knows it wouldn’t have been possible without his old manager. “They were pioneers and we cannot compete with that no matter how many trophies we win,” Guardiola said in 2011. “We will never equal the period of the Dream Team – they were the first to break up the long period without success.”
That long period was one title win in the 14 seasons preceding Cruyff’s arrival in 1988. It took him until 1991 to land his maiden Liga crown, but it proved the first of four in succession to complement two Copa del Reys (1988, 1989), the European Cup Winners’ Cup (1989) and a first-ever European Cup in 1992.
Cruyff got tough when he needed to be, which meant only one season for Gary Lineker in his squad as the Dutchman instead hailed in the likes of Ronald Koeman, Michael Laudrup, Hristo Stoichkov and Romario for a quite glorious Barcelona era.
50-41 • 40-31 • 30-21 • 20-11 • 10-1
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