Interestment’s 20 Greatest Footballers of All Time

In a world where there are soccer players bloody everywhere, these are the greatest to ever squeeze on a pair of football slippers…

Michael Laudrup – there hasn’t been a better footballer since the dawn of mankind, his hair remained silky and impenetrable throughout his career

Tino Asprilla – never looked fully aware that he was playing a professional football match

Matt Le Tissier – criminally wasted by numerous England bosses who presumably confused him for a Frenchman, a country where his surname literally translates as The Tissier

Peter Beardsley – his legacy has been rather smudged by latter-life suggestions of behaving like a total bellend, but on the pitch in the mid-80s there were few men more lovely

Ronaldinho – mastered the art of looking one way and kicking the ball the other, causing defenders to pile up on top of one another in a heap

Fat Ronaldo – a few years before the other Ronaldo strutted into view with his shoulders back as far as they could go and a freshly waxed nutsack, there was a much bigger sheriff in town, and he could eat a whole apple through a tennis racket

Young Wayne Rooney – once upon a time, Wayne was just another teen sensation who enjoyed huge lollipops, elderly prostitutes, and playing football completely without fear

Steve McManaman – the only English footballer to truly excel in Europe (if you ignore all of the others who have excelled in Europe)

Jurgen Klinsmann – back when English footie was full of Frankenstein Monsters kicking lumps out of each other, in sashayed Jurgen with his sweet transatlantic drawl to ice skate around the pitch

Ian Rush – otherwise known as Frankie Goes to Ian Rush, no one has been better at the simple art of taking this and putting it over there

Andrea Pirlo – as Italian as tucking your napkin into the top of your shirt, you wouldn’t be surprised if Pirlo was casually smoking a cigarette while he played

John Barnes – there hasn’t been a better England player than John Barnes, and anyone who just thought of Gazza is wrong. Completely wrong

Juninho – a tiny little lad, he swapped the sandy bottoms and pert beaches of Brazil for Middlesbrough, which is less nice

Ruud Gullit – so good it’s impossible to accurately say what position he played. All of them probably

Zinedine Zidane – so good they named him twice. But with fractionally different spellings

Chris Waddle – the smoother, sweeter, more soulful voice in the band Glenn & Chris, he’ll unfairly be remembered for skying a pen

Jan Molby – born and raised in a small area of Merseyside called Denmark, he was the drummer in The Beatles before they got famous, and once dated a Catholic girl called Cilla Black

Socrates – not to be confused with the famous Greek bullshitter, we’re talking about the best, most coveted panini sticker of the 1980s

Paolo Maldini – if footballers were rated solely on looks, this guy would be an eleven out of ten, it’s like he’s carved from marble. On skills, same story

Maradona – okay, fine, best player ever. Played like a man on cocaine