Letting the stattos determine football's finest has produced a ludicrous list which will have Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal fans cringing. Is Ali Daei really better than Thierry Henry and Kevin Keegan? The high-falutin’ Association of Football Statisticians have been hard at it to produce a list of the 100 greatest players of all time. They have combed their database of every footballer from every club and every match played in professional football – ever – and bugger me if Pelé isn’t No.1. Tell me a poll that the great Édson Arantes do Nascimento has not won – World Soccer magazine, Italy’s Guerin' Sportivo, Brazilian rag Placar and France Football all made him their player of the last century. And, of course, he was prominent in FIFA’s politically correct and fatally flawed all-time top 100 of 2004, but then it was Pelé himself who did the picking in that case. To spare his blushes, that list was purely alphabetical and included two women who were adjudged better than Frank Lampard. But, in general, not much argument over the undisputed No.1 of the global game. Now it’s the turn of that eminent and sad band of anoraks at the AFS, who seem to have come up in the football world since Pelé hung up his boots. I can recall them operating out of a poky house in the wastelands of Basildon instead of their current swish-sounding address in London. From their mountain of stats, covering 270,000 matches, 46,000 players and 8,000 teams, with results going back to the earliest matches of the 19th century, they have given us the predictable winner again. Former Brazil midfielder Gérson, Pelé's old team-mate, reacted to being left out of the FIFA 100 by tearing up a copy of the list on Brazilian TV. In which case, AFS towers is in danger of being torched because of one even more staggering omission … yes, the late great Georgie Best does not make their top 100, let alone the top 10. Crazy enough that Maradona limps in at No.6, Michel Platini is a pathetic 13th and Johan Cruyff, the total footballer, can’t even dent the top 20. Fat boy Ronaldo and his Brazilian sidekick Romario are at two and three in the panoply of statisticians’ stars – well, they did both score hat-tricks against Australia in 1997 and Romario has gone on to great things in beach soccer. But where is Eric Cantona? What about Denis Law? I’m no Manchester United fan but could these boffins of the round-ball game be ever so slightly antI-Old Trafford? How can Best not even register when Iran’s Ali Daei comes in at 26 – ahead of the likes of Ronaldinho and Thierry Henry? It just goes to prove that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Football is all about beauty, passion, sublime moments of skill that live in memory for ever. Nobody in a million years would say baseball or cricket is better than sex. Those sports survive and thrive on data and analysis and figures. Poor Bestie has been reduced to a statistical non-entity because his career did not add up in the strict criteria of points for trophies won, captaincy and the level he played at. In short, hard luck for being born in Northern Ireland, George, and not winning the World Cup. The AFS’s top 100 is the basis of a new book on the Greatest Ever Footballers, described as the definitive list of the very best players of all time. Without the Best of the lot, it’s about as definitive as a greatest cricketers without Sir Donald Bradman. So do us a favour, stato, and stick your anally-retentive list where the sun doesn’t shine. But, for argument’s sake, here’s the top 100 in full:
