Best Player to start a team with today: August 16, 2021
Five years ago, a young Frenchman took the world soccer scene by storm with his speed and finishing prowess. But not just speed. Incredible acceleration and top end, rivaled by few anywhere or anytime. But not just speed and acceleration for he also possessed the soft feet needed to tame that long forward pass and immediately become a threat on goal. But not just speed, acceleration and soft either. He had what almost all strikers dream of having and that is an instinctual ability to finish.
Yes, Kylian Mbappe seemed to have it all and I can recall long conversations between Jim and speculating that if you were going to start a team today, who would you take first in which said Kylian Mbappe received much, much consideration over even Lionel Messi. In fact, before many years had passed, he became our pick. The best immediate and longer term player on the planet. The 1st choice for starting a new team today.
But this year, after reigning for the last 2 years, is Mbappe still the man? Well let’s dig deeper and hold a short investigation into not who is the best soccer player on the planet today, but who are the top 5 guys on the planet you’d start a team with today. Yes, there’s likely to be some over lap, but let’s find out for sure.
Here is how many times these players were voted onto 5 popular top 10 lists:
5 Kevin DeBruyne 29
5 Lionel Messi 34
5 Lewandowski 32
5 Neymar 29
5 Mbappe 22
Harry Kane 28
5 Erling Haaland 20
2 Bruno Fernandes
Lukaku 27
5 Ronaldo 36
Kimmich 25
3 Van Dijk 29
3 Mane 28
Salah
If we take only those players who made every list we have:
De Bruyne 29
5Lionel Messi 34
5Lewandowski 32
5Neymar 28
5Mbappe 22
5Erling Haaland 20
5Ronaldo 36
Seven extraordinary players by anyone’s standards. Who makes the top 5 of players you would want to start a team with today? We could debate that all night. For our purposes, looking at the ages of the top players in the game Mbappe and Haaland are so young compared to the rest of this field, I believe that qualifies both of them for automatic entry into the top 5 and therefore answers the question, would Mbappe still be in it.
And now it’s time to admit, that given the ages of the other players on our short list, the only 2 responsible choices for who you would want to start your team with come down to those 2 – Haaland and Mbappe. So who’s it going to be? Talk amongst yourselves and Jim and I will be back to tell you our choice and why in our next blog post.