The best club team in the world, if international players’ organisation Fifpro is to be believed, is AC Milan.
Yes, the Italian side beaten on penalties by Liverpool in last season’s European Cup final in Istanbul, the outfit incapable of holding on to a 3-0 half-time lead, managed to get no fewer than five players into the world’s best side.
Four of the back five were from the San Siro: the ancient Paolo Maldini and his defensive partners, Alessandra Nesta and Brazilian Cafu, in front of his club, and country goalkeeper Dida.
And, surprisingly for Istanbul hero Steven Gerrard, none of the Liverpool players got the nod from Fifpro, with 38 000 professionals from around the world casting their votes for the first time.
With Ronaldinho voted world player of the year at the banquet in London on Monday night, the team looked like this:
Goalkeeper: Dida (AC Milan and Brazil).
Defenders: John Terry (Chelsea and England), Alessandro Nesta (AC Milan and Italy), Paolo Maldini (AC Milan and Italy), Cafu (AC Milan and Brazil).
Midfielders: Frank Lampard (Chelsea and England), Zinedine Zidane (Real Madrid and France), Ronaldinho (FC Barcelona and Brazil), Claude Makelele (Chelsea and France).
Strikers: Andriy Shevchenko (AC Milan and Ukraine), Samuel Eto’o (FC Barcelona and Cameroon).
It’s not a bad side, is it? John Terry and Frank Lampard, two of the younger stars, are the English faces.
Their Chelsea teammate Claude Makalele, formerly of Real Madrid, also gets a look in and takes the London club’s representation to three, one more than Barcelona and two more than Real Madrid in a side monopolised by just four big-spending European clubs.
Wayne Rooney, though voted the world’s young player of the year at 19, didn’t get into the top XI. Just as well, given his behaviour of late.
Cristiano Ronaldo was voted the fans’ best young player in a world-wide poll but he too missed out on a place in the first team.
That means the old established names of English football, Manchester United and Arsenal, who between them have won all but two of the titles since the Premiership began, didn’t find a niche in the world side.
This is surprising given Thierry Henry’s penchant for winning the Premiership top-scorer award of late and Rio Ferdinand’s status as the world’s most expensive defender.
But perhaps more important than the club element — given that Roman Abramovich could probably afford to buy all 11 of these superstars — is the international make-up of the side. Brazil boast three of the top men, England, Italy and France two each, with Cameroon and the Ukraine supplying one each.
Makes you wonder what Germany, Spain, Holland and the other European powers must think. Not to mention the rest of Africa and Latin America.
And behind the scenes the world’s best-known player, David Beckham, continues to suffer a serious decline. Following England’s shock World Cup defeat at the hands of Northern Ireland in Belfast, Beckham’s Real Madrid have suffered three defeats on the trot.
And after the last, a 1-0 reverse against lowly Espanyol on Sunday, he is alleged to have slapped sub Sergio Sanchez in the tunnel after the game.
Sanchez claimed: ”After we’d won, Beckham was waiting in the tunnel. He blocked my path and started insulting me, calling me a ‘son of a whore’. Then he slapped me and went crazy.
”I couldn’t believe it. It’s no way for the captain of England to behave. Luckily for him some other players pulled him away. All I did was cough when he was taking a corner when I was warming up on the touch line.”
Becks disputes this, of course. He says: ”Sanchez was shouting just as I took the corner, but it was just one of those things. Words were exchanged but it’s ludicrous to suggest I laid a finger on him.”
Nevertheless, the picture of a man on the decline is hard to shake off.
There was a time when Beckham would have been one of the first names on a World XI team sheet, if only for his hype and marketability.
No more.