Sport

Soccer selections are embarrassing compared to GAA Allstar sides

Kenny Archer

Kenny Archer

Kenny is the deputy sports editor and a Liverpool FC fan.

THE wisdom of crowds? The foolishness of clowns, more like - wha'?!

Two recent soccer selections seriously queried the validity of the idea that the more opinions you gather together on a subject, the closer you are likely to get to the 'correct', best answer.

That might well work in terms of guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar, or the weight of a prize cow at a country fayre, but in terms of choosing the best players in sport it's clearly a flawed concept.

The BBC website recently published the results of player ratings given by the general public in the English Premier League to show the supposed team of the season so far.

With Manchester City well clear at the top of the table, guess how many of their players made the XI:

Six? Nope. Five? Nah. Four? Guess again. Three? Not quite. Two? Do you really 'know' football? One? Well, which one, eh?

The answer, amazingly, astonishingly, alarmingly, is NONE.

In all, 14 players rated more highly than ANY Manchester City player - NONE of whom merited an average above 7. Puzzled shrug emoji.

At least there were several players from second-placed Liverpool in the selection.

Mo Salah, of course. What sort of eejits would ignore the 'Egyptian king'?

A Liverpool full-back and centre-back too. Unfortunately they happened to be the wrong two.

Trent Alexander-Arnold has been absolutely outstanding this season - but the public preferred Tariq Lamptey of Brighton at right-back. They also chose Liverpool's Andy Robertson at left-back, even though his form dipped earlier this season to the extent that he was dropped for some games.

Virgil van Dijk also got the nod. Now, VVD is a superb centre half - but his Liverpool club-mate Joel Matip has been better this campaign, certainly in the period before early January when this voting occurred.

The back four was completed by…not Thiago Silva or Antonio Rudiger, but - Celtic fans look away now - Shane Duffy of Brighton.

The Brighton voting bloc is super strong.

The midfield wasn't bizarre - apart from the absence of any Manchester City players - consisting of West Ham's Declan Rice (formerly a youth player with Chelsea), Conor Gallagher (on loan from Chelsea at Crystal Palace), and N'Golo Kante (of, yes, Chelsea).

Up front, Salah was joined by another Hammer, Michail Antonio, and Chelsea's Kai Havertz, who had the second highest average rating (7.23), behind Salah's 7.31 and just ahead of Rice (7.22).

In goal? Ederson? - no. Edouard Mendy? - no. Alisson Becker? - no. David de Gea, then. He's had to make a lot of saves. No.

Aaron Ramsdale of Arsenal. OK, he's done quite well, but would you truly choose him above any of the aforementioned four?

In truth, this should have been labelled the 'Exceeding expectations eleven'.

Obviously people believe that Manchester City, Liverpool, and Chelsea players should play well, so they need to play REALLY well to get marks over 7.

It's what I term the 'Peter Canavan syndrome' in the GAA. The great man could score 1-2 and he'd get a 7, maybe a 7.5; almost anyone else who performed just as well would receive at least an 8.

That can lead to excessive criticism too, if players aren't going great - and even sometimes when they are.

Even Manchester United's best player (de Gea, of course), only received an average rating of 5.95. The full list wasn't published, only the top three for each club, but of those other 57 players only two were rated lower than the Spanish goalkeeper - Burnley defender Ben Mee (5.85), and Everton wide-man Andros Townsend (5.77).

Go, as they say, figure.

Who's doing the ratings? Each club's own fans? Opposition fans? Neutrals? Pretend neutrals?

Obviously Manchester United fans - as they're perfectly entitled to do, expect better from their expensively assembled, highly-paid squad. Yet the idea that there have been 55 better performers than de Gea does not bear much scrutiny.

Nor that no Manchester United player merited an average rating of more than 6, but the team was still in or around the top four.

Of course there can be outstanding individual players on less successful teams, but to have a Premier League team of the season so far without Joao Cancelo, Bernardo Silva, and Alexander-Arnold is frankly incredible.

On the subject of 'frankly incredible', what was that earlier question I posed about Mo Salah?

The Fifpro (global players' body) World 11, announced last week, didn't include Liverpool's brilliant Egyptian. Very puzzled shrug emoji. OK, that's for the calendar year of 2021, but Salah dragged Liverpool into the top three after an awful January and has been absolutely superb this season.

The full FifPro team, was as follows: Donnarumma; Alaba, Bonucci, Dias; De Bruyne, Jorginho, Kante; Lewandowski, Messi, C Ronaldo, Haaland.

Now, they are all excellent players - but the team itself is a shambles.

A 3-3-4 formation? With no wing-backs, never mind any full-backs? And no wingers either?

Laughable.

That's what comes from letting players pick teams.

In its favour, the FifPro selection did at least contain two Manchester City players, namely defender Ruben Dias and midfield genius Kevin de Bruyne.

The only Premier League player to make both teams was the remarkable N'Golo Kante. His Chelsea colleague Jorginho was also chosen, after helping both club and country (Italy) to become champions of Europe.

On the down side, the other Premier League player picked was Cristiano Ronaldo. Really.

That's like people voting in Peter Canavan nowadays (at the age of 50).

GAA supporters, for all the idea that they're extremely 'parochial', tend to be more fair-minded than soccer voters.

As examples, I refer you to the many Cavan players selected on the 2020 Irish News Football Allstars, and the Monaghan men chosen on teams in the previous decade, even though neither county - nor Donegal - would be a major selling spot for this publication.

Perhaps this goes without saying, but soccer supporters are more blinded by bias and dazzled by glamour than GAA folk.