Who's the DADDY?

Who is the greatest of all time? Which player stands out? Which player's range of abilities supersedes all others?

You can pick holes in the pursuit of an answer to the above questions.

First off, there are many different types of footballer. There are goalkeepers, there are defenders, there are combative midfielders and creative midfielders, there are midfielders who do both. There are wingers and goal scorers. There are wingers who are goal scorers. There are 'goal scorers' who aren't goal scorers...

"I don't know what I'm doing" Danny Graham*, 2013

I would argue watching Messi, Iniesta and Xavi is all the entertainment a football match needs.

They're three of the greatest players I'll ever see play the game. I'm in my mid 20s so I can't talk about the names I hear my elders speak of. I haven't seen anything but grainy footage of Duncan Edwards, Di Stefano, Best, Zico, Garincha and the multitude of other players everyone said were imperious in their time.

I just finished reading a book about Duncan Edwards. A player who had glory ripped away from him by disaster. Testimonials speak of his schoolboy days as if he was a behemoth. I've heard the same said about Francis Jeffers and, well... I'll leave it.

Edwards could have tripled England's number of World Cups according to some of the appraisals in this book. You can read and watch all the footage you want but ultimately you're always left wondering how good they were?

How would they cope with the modern day's ballistic pace? In equal measure, how would modern players cope with rubbish pitches and heavy footballs and boots made of lead?

These questions are regularly asked by 'experts' and journalists on football talk shows or on the waste of life punditry on Saturday Night Football. By definition, these are questions you can't answer. There's no way of knowing how Maradona would have coped with modern day football and there's no telling how today's millionaires would cope with yesteryear's impoverished conditions.

Unless you're 150 years old you can't say with certainty that a particular player is the best to ever kick a ball. A debate worth having is who is currently the best player kicking a ball.

The winner of the FIFA Ballon d’Or will be revealed as part of a televised show at the Zurich Kongresshaus on 13 January 2014, during which the FIFA FIFPro World XI, the FIFA Puskás Award – for the most beautiful goal of the year – the FIFA Presidential Award and the FIFA Fair Play Award will also be presented.

So considering the only thing anyone noticed in the preceding paragraph is that the world's best player will be revealed on the 13th Jan let's talk about that. It's widely agreed upon that there are three players in the running. Ribery, Messi and Ronaldo.

Ronaldo has performed individually better than anyone else this season. His abilities fired Portugal to the World Cup against Sweden where he made the man who will probably finish just outside the top three for this prize, Zlatan, look like a run of the mill 30 goal a season man.

Ronaldo last season scored an incredible 55 goals in all competitions. Messi, 60. Ronaldo contributed 12 assists, Messi outshone him with 16.

Cristiano's been sulking in the enormous shadow of the diminutive Lionel Messi for the last five seasons. But this campaign it has started differently.

67 goals in 57 appearances for club and country in 2013 makes Ronaldo the top scoring player in the world with a better goals to game ratio than anyone else. Messi is injured until 2014 and only managed a mere 45 goals in 46 games so if there was ever going to be a chance for Ronaldo to win the ballon d'or (Ball of the World) again surely the time is now. 

Ribery will feel aggrieved to have achieved so much and yet get such a minuscule look in but if we're honest with ourselves, was he really any better than Arjen Robben or Philipp Lahm last season? Ribery’s 23 assists for Bayern were impressive, his 11 goals less so. The team that won the treble for Jupp Henckes was exactly that. A team. Ribery's contribution was great but he didn't even score the winner in the final. 

Messi and Ronaldo are individuals who exist in a league of their own at football's zenith. There are no players anywhere near them, regardless of what the poo dispensers on the television box say about high profile players after they have a world beating six months... come back when your shiny flash in the pan has a world beating six years... you vacuous wastes. 

This might be the Portuguese's year considering his statistics trump Messi's for the first time in five years, not to mention the fact that voting reopened during a fortnight when Ronaldo packed his Portugal team mates into his Louis Vuitton man bag, popped it on his back and carried it all the way to Rio.

Who knows how the French will vote?

Will they prove a habitual bunch and revert to default by gifting Messi the prize in a season where the little pepsi juggler hasn't hit the peaks he's scaled year on year for half a decade. Messi got 14 goals in 14 league and Champions League appearances this season before a left hamstring tear on November 10th cut his year short. It's also Messi's first injury for years, which raises it's own concerns. Messi was never injured under Guardiola which prompts the question... has the stitching come loose on Superman's iconic suit?

Will they employ bias and give it to the first Frenchman since Zidane to do anything anyone - Arsenal fans aside - notices or cares about? Or will they be pragmatic and give it to Ronny despite not liking him because he's talented, lacks charisma and is stepping out with a supermodel but more importantly is aware and proud of all of the above.

I'd give it to Ronaldo but then again I do love him. If you love footballers who are really really good at football you should love him too.

*Danny Graham may or may not have ever said this.

Barcelona do what they do so well that they've fooled everyone else into thinking they should do it too.

Some think the genesis of the tiki-taka revolution coincides with Pep taking the helm at the Camp Nou. He was raised in the ways of the Catalan. The heralded and mythical La Masia has produced many great players to date but in the early 90s it had done sweet FA.
Indeed, Pep was only the third graduate in the history of La Masia to advance into the first XI.

After an illustrious 18 years in the First XI at Barcelona; 8 of those years under the tutelage of club legend Johan Cruyff, he bounced around for 4 or 5 years before heading back to Catalonia after being afforded the opportunity to coach Barca B.

Johan Cruyff... the man who gave Barça their Dream Team. The man who delivered four consecutive La Liga titles between 1991 and 1994. Adding a Cup Winners' Cup, a European Cup, the Copa del Rey, a European Super Cup as well as three Supercopa de Espana (Spain's Charity Shield) made Cruyff the most successful manager in the club's history... until Pep.

His contribution extended beyond trophies. It's a story told too often to recount but in the late 70s Cruyff made a proposition to then president Josep Núñez. He wanted an academy at Barça that would mirror the Ajax academy which espoused Total Football.

Combine Dutch heritage with the one and two touch football (tiki-taka) championed in Spain and you'll have the philosophy of La Masia. This in turn means you'll end up with the embarrassing trophy haul of Barcelona's last 6 seasons.

'end up with', meaning 'not overnight' - meaning 'don't try this, then not be good at it and then think it's redundant because it doesn't happen overnight'

It took years for Barcelona's philosophy to pay dividends, decades maybe.

Iniesta's hero, Pep Guardiola

They do it well, they've harnessed a way of playing that exhausts the opponent physically and mentally. Teams aren't physically tired against Barca. I'd be surprised if 60 minutes into a Barca game opposition players have run more than they might have against any other team. They only look knackered because they've been psychologically minced.

Their tactics have sprung pretenders to the throne. Closer to home the common thread between the pretenders is Roberto Martinez. Southampton are currently the best at it in the Premiership, but it began at Swansea under Roberto Martinez's tutelage, then Brendan Rodgers and most recently Michael Laudrup. We've also seen Martinez's Wigan employ a pressing game focused on keeping possession once it's retrieved and now he's doing the same thing at Everton. Brendan Rodgers has carried these principles into his management of the Liverpool team.

In Germany, Dortmund utilised a high pressing game on route to two consecutive Bundesliga titles as well as a Champions League final. Speaking of the Champions League, PSG recently became the only club (apart from Barcelona) to complete more than 800 passes in a game.

Chelsea's owner Roman Abramovich is obsessed with his side being successful AND entertaining. One without the other is unacceptable. Some of world football's greatest managers have suffered shorter tenures than they might have imagined because of this expectation.

The rest of football has stood back in awe for five years. This team takes apart the great and the good of Europe. They spawn imitators who just aren't as good as them; even Bayern who were categorically better than Barca over two legs last season swerved away from their normal passing carousel game plan for both legs against the Catalans.

They played counter attacking football and were faster and stronger than a Barca side that had its problems at the time.

There are people who think there's nothing entertaining about watching a Barcelona game. I know where they're coming from. It is a fairly legitimate claim to say that from the perspective of a neutral looking for an entertaining game of football, watching Barca is too one sided. They keep the ball for 70% of the game and they bide their time, they wait for their moment (when Messi gets the ball) and they pounce.

Most of those who don't like Barca are football fans but I think if you don't like watching Barcelona play football, much like a mentalist, you can't be reasoned with... you just don't get it.

Those who don't like Barca can go to the theatre or the cinema for their melodrama and unpredictability. I want to watch football and these boys do it so well they've made the rest of the world think they can but probably more impressively they've made us think we should.

I mean this team literally won the Euros then the World Cup and then went and won the Euros again and they'll probably be favourites to win the World Cup again because this generation of La Masia graduates are just that good.

So good that the hapless FA wants us all to be like them too. So they'll form bullshit commissions made up of individuals who have uselessly conflicting opinions on how we should restructure English football. You want to improve the game in this country. Send everyone to watch Barca.

I'm being flippant now but my point is that whether you're Chelsea and your tactic is to buy all the smallest, most technical players you can lay your hands on or Southampton who recognise that the high pressing, possession-centric game also works well if you're not heavy on superstars - it doesn't matter.

NO ONE IS BARCELONA because NO ONE HAS LEO, ANDRES or XAVI

Add these three to the above game plan and you have a master class the likes of which we might never see again.