Sports fans gather round for our list of the top 16 best U.K. soccer players of all time and see if your favorite player makes the cut.
Growing up, there was no place I’d rather be than on the field chasing a soccer ball. I spent many years playing the sport competitively, but don’t fin too much time these days to play. While I also don’t typically watch the sport on television, there’s nothing like watching an intense soccer match in person. Usually, when I’m traveling around Europe, I will try to fit a match into my schedule because the fans are so into the games. The energy is electric when you’re in one of those stadiums.
I’ve never been to England, so I haven’t had a chance to catch a game there yet, but I’m sure it wouldn’t disappoint. The country has a number of famous football clubs like Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool to name a few. Currently, the best English football players 2017 are Arsenal’s Alexis Sanchez, Bournemouth’s Steve Cook, and Burnley’s Ben Mee according to the Guardian. If these players keep it up, they could be well on their way to a chance on the list of top ten England football players of all time, as they are already the best current English football players. Interestingly enough, none of those players were mentioned on the lists we saw of best English football players 2016.
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Football (or Soccer if you’re in the U.S.) is a very popular sport around the world, especially in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America. Many around the world consider soccer to be the most popular sport of all. Naturally, a lot of sentiment is involved in making such a list. Before we begin, it should be mentioned that if you do not see the name of your favorite English soccer player in the list, that does not mean he is not worthy of being on the list, it’s just that the short premise just does not allow us to incorporate all the most decorated English football players.
Just determining a top 10 all time english players was tough enough, which is part of why we had to stretch it out to 16. However, we did manage to find quite a few similar lists from reliable sources on the internet, and as you can expect the lists were not consistent when it came to ranking. Although nearly the same names were being mentioned, their rankings were different. That is to be expected, as every expert has their own opinion, and that reflects in the rankings. We took a stab at ranking these highly regarded players based on relevant expert opinions and their career sheets. For example, we considered the number of goals when ranking a striker and a clean record from defenders. We also considered the clubs they played in, as being part of a highly reputed club tells a lot. As you can imagine, being subjective is not that easy when it comes to ranking best athletes of all time. To be fair, anyone who made it onto the list, had the potential to become the best. The online resources we used for this article are The Telegraph, Barry Hugman’s Footballers, Goal, RSSSF and several other similar websites.
Now that said, let’s get our list of top 16 best U.K. soccer players of all time, started.
16. John Barnes
We are starting our list off with John Barnes. Barnes’ best games were between the 80s and early 90s when he played for Watford and Liverpool respectively. He played as the left winger, and with his sheer skill and agility, he won over the hearts of millions of fans and his peers alike. Unfortunately, in 1992, he injured his Achilles tendon, and that definitely hurt his career. Although he made a swift recovery, his performance was never the same. Perhaps, he would have been ranked much higher if not for his injury.
