Top ten football clubs

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3 July 2003

I thought this would be easy and fun, but I wanted to write so much about some of these clubs that it all got bogged down. There are other clubs I like, of course, and I’ll always have a favourite in a particular match, but these are the ones I like best.

Schalke 04
They were involved in a scandal thirty years ago, when their players threw a match against Arminia Bielefeld. ‘People’s champions’ of Germany in 2001 when they scored the most goals in the league and conceded the fewest, but lost out to Bayern thanks to a decision — contentious to say the least — in the 94th minute on the last day that gave Bayern a free kick, from which they scored.
São Paulo
I don’t really have a reason. They’re expected to sell Kaká, a wonderful talent, to one of the Milan clubs this summer.
Ajax

Feyenoord and PSV fans aren’t happy about it, but Ajax are the Dutch club. Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff introduced the world to concept of ‘total football’ in the 60s and 70s. It all went a little off-course after the 1973 Champions Cup win, as the Dutch side of 1974, one of the best ever, somehow failed to win the World Cup.

They bounced back in the mid 1990s with an exciting young team made up mostly of Dutch players like Bergkamp, Seedorf, Kluivert, Davids, and the de Boer brothers. This side got broken up thanks to the lure of money from Italy and Spain, but they’ve bounced back once more with another young team. This one’s more diverse in nationalities, being brought in from Ajax’s feeder clubs in South Africa and Ghana. They’ve supplemented this by snapping up promising teenagers like Chivu and Zlatan.

Liking Ajax, as you can probably tell, doesn’t have a lot to do with how many trophies they win. They’re one of the few clubs with a philosophy that pervades everything they do.

Real Betis Balompié
I used to play as them in Championship Manager 97/98. Since then, they’ve bought Denílson for a world record fee, gone down, come back up, and unearthed Joaquín, an old-school right winger.
Nottingham Forest
Basically a recent addition for playing the best football outside the Premiership last season. Another great youth system, and with history: they have won the Champions Cup twice and the league just once (they won the Champions Cup twice in succession).
Boca Juniors
The new Copa Libertadores champions, but that’s not really why I picked them. Nah, I piocked them because I love to play as them in WE6FE . This is mostly because they were one of the last teams that I edited to have correct names, so I just tried to keep the ball moving and slot it home. It worked a treat.
Milan
All right, I need one glamour club, I’m only human.
Atalanta
Atalanta was a figure from Greek mythology, a female athlete. The club’s from Bergamo, Italy, which is near Milan and so there are parallels with Bolton, in the north-west of a country and a congested football region. They have a good youth system, and seem to mostly swap players with the two Milan clubs. Relegated this season in a play-off against Reggina.
Valencia
The Spanish league is the best league in Europe, and by extension the world, and to my mind Valencia are the best team in it. When Cúper was in charge, the side were defensive and tough, but with magic up front from players like Gaizka Mendieta and Claudio López. Under Rafa Benítez, they’ve kept the steely defence provided by players like Ayala and Cañizares, with a far slicker passing game orchestrated by Argentine Pablo Aimar and Rubén Baraja. This season, the games against Inter, managed by Cúper and purveying some sort of anti-football, really took everything out of them. They’ll be back.
Bolton Wanderers
I don’t really need a reason, they’re my club. We’re play-off veterans, one of the founder members of the Football League, and we’ve somehow stayed in the Premiership on limited resources for three consecutive seasons.

Comments

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    Posted by saeed afranie on 25 January 2004 at 12:43:35.