Let’s try something new today. I’m gonna leave this thread open all day/weekend, and I’ll check in from time to time. What I want us to try to do is figure out the platonic ideal of the “third-favorite” soccer player. Everyone has their favs, likely from their favorite teams, and then everyone has their second-favs, likely some ever-present superstar from elsewhere. I would guess that Lionel Messi is the most popular second-favorite player in the world. But what are the predominant characteristics of a person’s third-favorite player? And who best fits that description? Let’s figure it out!
Of these, what do we think is most accurate? Or maybe ... it's a combo of the three: Your third-favorite player is the player who most accurately represents what you actually love about the sport beyond your specific fandom (favorite player) and unmistakable brilliance/dominance (your second favorite player)? I kinda like that. What say you all?
I like this a lot. When I think about my favourite player, I often find myself in my mind going to players who are third on my list and feeling a slight guit about it because you're supposed to say your favourite team's player or one of the most dominant players in these kinds of conversations. But I agree, your third favourite player might actually be your favourite player and say the most about what you value in the game. So for me, it might be someone like Claude Makelele because I love those DM engines. But in actuality, if I had the courage, I would say he is my favourite player and take the criticism!
I am issuing a decree. Our definition of third-most favorite player, based on a composite of all of the answers below, is as follows: "the player who most accurately represents what you actually love about the sport beyond your specific fandom (favorite player) and unmistakable brilliance/dominance (your second favorite player)." If you're still clocking through the thread today or this weekend, I'd love to hear who you guys think is the one player who most specifically fits that definition. Once we do that, we will have chosen the Ultimate Third-Favorite Player.
I’ll drop everything to watch Messi/peak Henry (unmistakable brilliance), De Bruyne/TAA represent everyone I love about the sport aside from my love of arsenal (silky, smooth, amazing ball strikers and players), but Matt LeTissier (spectacular moments followed by disappointment) is the perfect third best
I'm way late to this thread but I love the working definition.
For me, currently, it's probably KdB, and I think that's true for a lot of non-City fans. I think part of this stems from the fact that he doesn't *seem* like that good of a dribbler or an athletic specimen (like Messi and Ronaldo, respectively). He's not all that "flashy" - he's just got absolutely flawless touch and technique and can control the game without physically dominating it. It's maybe a bit easier to see yourself as KdB than it is to see yourself as Ronaldo or Messi (even though that doesn't really make sense). Kind of reminds me of another great 3rd-Favorite: he of the recent Oral History...Juan Ramon Riquelme!
While he does play for my favorite team, N'Golo Kante absolutely represents what I love about the sport. Through pure passion and ability, he was able to compensate for his lack of insane physical attributes. He isn't flashy because he doesn't have to be; he just works his tail off messing everything up for the opposing team. It isn't typically a glamourous job, but he's made it his own.
I have not watched him play professionally naturally, however I think it is only fitting that The Special One finish in 3rd place. It just feels right.
Isn't the third favourite someone you see in a game and are always happy when they pop up? Like your favourite character actors. I'm thinking of Peter crouch personally
I think of a third-favorite player as someone who is incredibly fun to watch in small doses but is likely incredibly frustrating to root for day in and day out if he's on your favorite team - someone like Felipe Anderson (or half of West Ham's roster, really).
It’s Andres Iniesta, who probably qualifies as a “soccer-fan-virtue-signal“ based on your proposed taxonomy. But might represent a fourth category of “sui generis genius” who plays the game unlike anyone else. Iniesta is a frictionless, gliding dribbler who has no analogue even if he has been compared to Michael Laudrup. In American sports parlance, he doesn’t have a great player comp.
aye, to me iniesta has always been a nice litmus test on if someone is a true football fan - all true lovers of the game know how sublime he was, yet for the casual fans he’s someone who they wouldn’t properly appreciate imo. Never had gaudy goal totals or stats yet was incredibly influential in everything to arguably the best club side of all time (Barca 09-11) and one of the best international sides of all time ( Spain 08-12). Always had a knack for showing up in the biggest games and scoring the biggest goals. WC final v Holland in 2010, CL vs Chelsea etc. I’m lucky enough to have the privilege to see him up close live in the flesh, absolutely tore Madrid to shreds in the 4-0 Classico in November of 2015 @ Bernabeau. It’s something I’ll one day tell me grand children about.
I feel like your third favorite is someone who has to be good, but not so great that he "belongs to the masses" like Messi/Ronaldo/Salah, and he can't be from your favorite club. It's almost someone you find yourself drawn to unintentionally? And rooting biases aside, I think it's usually a person who personifies something you find really fun or cool or interesting about the game. And maybe you don't necessarily clear your schedule to watch the guy play, like with your favorite team or a world-class, generational player...but you definitely sit down and watch whenever you see them on. I like midfielders who can do everything asked of them, in attack and defense, and can play the perfect pass and score goals when needed. But instead of coasting on talent and technique, they also put in a lot of work and play physically...my third favorite player is Toni Kroos.
I think this pretty much nails it, but these days I think the desire for your team to sign a player is (correctly) much more rooted in stats/production. I think a crucial piece of the "Third Favorite" has to be that he/she just does shit you love to watch. I guess the reason I say this is that my Third Favorite for a while was Jay Jay Okocha. I never wanted Man United to sign him because I didn't want to deal with the occasional frustration of him trying to do too much. It was much more fun to watch him outrageously punk people for Bolton....if that makes sense.
What about someone who is undeniably brilliant but has an identifiable Achilles heel? For instance, Erling Haaland. Could be the next once-in-a-generation player, but his politics suck and he’s still only 19.
Yaya Toure. Definitely just the most unique player of that last premier league decade and it felt like I was watching something I’d probably never see again. The balance of size and skill was incredible plus it was cool to see pundits trip over their words because the racially tinged “pace and power” stereotype couldn’t be applied to him because he was so unbelievable. I still think if you could field 11 of one player, a team of 11 Yayas blows everyone out of the water
Not a man city fan but it’s gotta be Raheem Sterling....love to watch him play. Used to frustrate me cause he would do a killer move and shank the shot in front of goal, but he’s become more efficient. And even though he destroyed colombia in the World Cup...it was still fun to see the dude ball out
I conceptualize this as what game would I watch if all the greats were playing on the same day. 1: Messi, 2: Liverpool as a whole, 3: Haaland (very specific to this moment but his rate of goal scoring is insane). Otherwise I'd go with De Bruyne at 3.
I think your third favorite is in a way the most expressive you might get to be. Your first and inevitably second will get compared by others, picked apart for why you chose them, etc. Third you just get to breathe. Rival team player, player with no trophies, journeymen, unsung heroes.
Give me extreme tech. Give me dribblers, wonder shot takers, give me beauty. Give me a casual rabona on November Sunday morning. Idc if your team loses and fails miserably.
Your third-favorite footballer is a journeyman superstar. Maybe they played for your team, maybe they didn't. Definitely had a successful international career. They're flashy, but not Ronaldinho flashy. A workmanlike brilliance. Very likely to become a commentator.
For me it's players who either are always fighting and giving it all despite maybe not being the best footballers. So for example (I'm from Germany) Gerald Asamoah (Schalke 04), Robert Huth, Jonas Hector (FC Köln) internationally somebody like Kante or Puyol. Or its those lazy geniuses who should be among the best but just never quite make it like payet, riquelme, van der vaart or in germany somebody like Mario Basler
1. Messi 2. Neymar. And third I gotta go with Pogba. Can he be inconsistent and sometimes tough to manage. Definitely. But oh man is he fun to watch when he’s on form. When he’s on form there is no one that can touch him
The player who hurts the team you support while playing beautifully but not quite enough to beat you. If Southampton would have signed Minamino, there could have been a large enough sample size for it to be him.
Third favorite is an incredibly talented player who for some reason, typically of his own doing, never reached his full potential. Every time they go on a run of good form you convince yourself this is the start of them fulfilling their potential.
For me those players are James Rodriguez and Juan Fernando Quintero
I feel like third favorite for me is all about grudging respect. It’s that player that you find yourself emotionally rooting for but get mad at yourself logically when you catch yourself doing it. For me, that’s Sergio Aguero. He seems so down to Earth, positive, and is incredibly skilled. It’s hard not to love his passion when he scores one of his bangers, even if it is for Man City.
On this definition a third favourite might well be the best player from a rival team - eg ‘I hate Spurs but I can’t help admiring Son’, or ‘I’m gutted Arsenal one but you can’t argue with that finish from Aubameyang’. A more interesting category (fourth favourite? Hate favourites?) would be the players who are cartoonishly villainous but add something to the game - Diego Costa, Sergio Ramos, Mourinho on the managerial side...
It's a tie between Toni Kroos and Sergio Ramos. Winning everything and being champions but doing so in their own unique ways. Kroos just being a lynchpin and slicing through opposition midfields with the occasional slick goal while Sergio Ramos just seeks and destroys lol
Got a few different candidates. The divine ponytail himself, Roberto Baggio, who it must be said was a missed penalty kick away @ USA 94 from pulling a reasonable impersonation of Maradona in Mexico 86. A truly sublime player, and a certain type that I always gravitated towards: a bit of the enigmatic mercurial genius who almost certainly will clash with various coaches and shirk from his defensive duties but is equally capable of conjuring up a moment of game winning brilliance. His velvet touch was otherworldly. And his goal against Czechoslovakia in Italia 90 was a sneaky top 5 all time WC goal for me.
Next would be Xavi Hernandez. We all know his metronomic brilliance on the pitch bossing a game from midfield but what I weirdly loved about him was his almost dogmatic approach to refuse to play in any other way than the “I get the ball, I pass the ball” Barca way. It’s almost as if the result of the match wasn’t even as important as playing *their* way and stubbornly refusing to play any other way. Nothing crystallizes his worldview for me more than one occasion I remember - it might have been after the 7-0 2 leg thrashing by Bayern in the CL in 2013-ish where after the game when asked by reporters about the disastrous result and he said something like “we had 2 or 3 x more completed passes than them” as if that was supposed to matter. 😂 for whatever reason it’s always cracked me up.
And finally gotta go with a fella whose greatness never seems to have gotten it’s just due - David Silva. To me he’s the best to ever wear the City shirt. And to me he has been the beating heart of their last decade of dominance in the prem. It’s weird to me that he’s never properly appreciated. More than even Aguero, Kompany, Yaya Toure,or the more recent players like De Bruyne, Sterling etc, when I think back on this era of City playing some of the best football, the guy I will always think of, rightly or wrongly, is David Silva. Full disclosure: I’m not a city supporter and I say this as a neutral, even someone who doesn’t think they’ve been great for the game In general as far as the financial doping and how it basically allows the likes of city or PSG to buy whomever as they essentially have an endless amount of $$. It helps that he seems a genuinely good bloke, an unselfish player and a humble role model.
I think another quality is that they aren’t usually the best player at their club, and (this might overlap a lot with the virtue-signaling point) you know your other soccer buddies probably won’t pick the same guy. Mine is Neves.
It seems like we're broadly getting into three categories here:
-Just plain-old good players who everyone respects but no one truly loves: Ballacks, Crouchies, etc.
-Maniacal, volatile geniuses who you love to watch but also secretly never want to have to root for: Quaresma, Traore, Quinteros
-A kind of soccer-fan virtue-signal, i.e. players that represent what you truly love about the sport beyond partisan fandom: Guti, Modric
This is progress!
Of these, what do we think is most accurate? Or maybe ... it's a combo of the three: Your third-favorite player is the player who most accurately represents what you actually love about the sport beyond your specific fandom (favorite player) and unmistakable brilliance/dominance (your second favorite player)? I kinda like that. What say you all?
I like this a lot. When I think about my favourite player, I often find myself in my mind going to players who are third on my list and feeling a slight guit about it because you're supposed to say your favourite team's player or one of the most dominant players in these kinds of conversations. But I agree, your third favourite player might actually be your favourite player and say the most about what you value in the game. So for me, it might be someone like Claude Makelele because I love those DM engines. But in actuality, if I had the courage, I would say he is my favourite player and take the criticism!
I am issuing a decree. Our definition of third-most favorite player, based on a composite of all of the answers below, is as follows: "the player who most accurately represents what you actually love about the sport beyond your specific fandom (favorite player) and unmistakable brilliance/dominance (your second favorite player)." If you're still clocking through the thread today or this weekend, I'd love to hear who you guys think is the one player who most specifically fits that definition. Once we do that, we will have chosen the Ultimate Third-Favorite Player.
I’ll drop everything to watch Messi/peak Henry (unmistakable brilliance), De Bruyne/TAA represent everyone I love about the sport aside from my love of arsenal (silky, smooth, amazing ball strikers and players), but Matt LeTissier (spectacular moments followed by disappointment) is the perfect third best
Vincent Kompany
Sonny
I'm way late to this thread but I love the working definition.
For me, currently, it's probably KdB, and I think that's true for a lot of non-City fans. I think part of this stems from the fact that he doesn't *seem* like that good of a dribbler or an athletic specimen (like Messi and Ronaldo, respectively). He's not all that "flashy" - he's just got absolutely flawless touch and technique and can control the game without physically dominating it. It's maybe a bit easier to see yourself as KdB than it is to see yourself as Ronaldo or Messi (even though that doesn't really make sense). Kind of reminds me of another great 3rd-Favorite: he of the recent Oral History...Juan Ramon Riquelme!
While he does play for my favorite team, N'Golo Kante absolutely represents what I love about the sport. Through pure passion and ability, he was able to compensate for his lack of insane physical attributes. He isn't flashy because he doesn't have to be; he just works his tail off messing everything up for the opposing team. It isn't typically a glamourous job, but he's made it his own.
I have not watched him play professionally naturally, however I think it is only fitting that The Special One finish in 3rd place. It just feels right.
IF The Special One is not allowed as an answer, I shall select Fantastic Mr. Fox aka Jamie Richard Vardy.
Consider this a vote for Toni Kroos!
Isn't the third favourite someone you see in a game and are always happy when they pop up? Like your favourite character actors. I'm thinking of Peter crouch personally
James Rodriguez, who I feel deserves much more than football has given him since the 2014 World Cup
N’Golo Kante
I think of a third-favorite player as someone who is incredibly fun to watch in small doses but is likely incredibly frustrating to root for day in and day out if he's on your favorite team - someone like Felipe Anderson (or half of West Ham's roster, really).
Jay-Jay Okocha
Son Heung-min. Always playing the beautiful game with a contagious joy. He scores meaningful goals for club and country.
It’s Andres Iniesta, who probably qualifies as a “soccer-fan-virtue-signal“ based on your proposed taxonomy. But might represent a fourth category of “sui generis genius” who plays the game unlike anyone else. Iniesta is a frictionless, gliding dribbler who has no analogue even if he has been compared to Michael Laudrup. In American sports parlance, he doesn’t have a great player comp.
aye, to me iniesta has always been a nice litmus test on if someone is a true football fan - all true lovers of the game know how sublime he was, yet for the casual fans he’s someone who they wouldn’t properly appreciate imo. Never had gaudy goal totals or stats yet was incredibly influential in everything to arguably the best club side of all time (Barca 09-11) and one of the best international sides of all time ( Spain 08-12). Always had a knack for showing up in the biggest games and scoring the biggest goals. WC final v Holland in 2010, CL vs Chelsea etc. I’m lucky enough to have the privilege to see him up close live in the flesh, absolutely tore Madrid to shreds in the 4-0 Classico in November of 2015 @ Bernabeau. It’s something I’ll one day tell me grand children about.
I feel like your third favorite is someone who has to be good, but not so great that he "belongs to the masses" like Messi/Ronaldo/Salah, and he can't be from your favorite club. It's almost someone you find yourself drawn to unintentionally? And rooting biases aside, I think it's usually a person who personifies something you find really fun or cool or interesting about the game. And maybe you don't necessarily clear your schedule to watch the guy play, like with your favorite team or a world-class, generational player...but you definitely sit down and watch whenever you see them on. I like midfielders who can do everything asked of them, in attack and defense, and can play the perfect pass and score goals when needed. But instead of coasting on talent and technique, they also put in a lot of work and play physically...my third favorite player is Toni Kroos.
this is a really good point. I would simplify it to "the player you've always wanted your favorite team to sign.
That's pretty excellent, and I know you're right b/c I'd have absolutely lost my mind (in a good way) if Liverpool ever signed Kroos!
I think this pretty much nails it, but these days I think the desire for your team to sign a player is (correctly) much more rooted in stats/production. I think a crucial piece of the "Third Favorite" has to be that he/she just does shit you love to watch. I guess the reason I say this is that my Third Favorite for a while was Jay Jay Okocha. I never wanted Man United to sign him because I didn't want to deal with the occasional frustration of him trying to do too much. It was much more fun to watch him outrageously punk people for Bolton....if that makes sense.
What about someone who is undeniably brilliant but has an identifiable Achilles heel? For instance, Erling Haaland. Could be the next once-in-a-generation player, but his politics suck and he’s still only 19.
Currently playing: N’Golo Kante
Retired: Raúl
The player who you always buy on FIFA career mode. I feel like Vinicius and Tonali are my guys, but I'm a City fan.
It's a guy I will always stop and watch when my team isn't on - KDB
Yaya Toure. Definitely just the most unique player of that last premier league decade and it felt like I was watching something I’d probably never see again. The balance of size and skill was incredible plus it was cool to see pundits trip over their words because the racially tinged “pace and power” stereotype couldn’t be applied to him because he was so unbelievable. I still think if you could field 11 of one player, a team of 11 Yayas blows everyone out of the water
Not a man city fan but it’s gotta be Raheem Sterling....love to watch him play. Used to frustrate me cause he would do a killer move and shank the shot in front of goal, but he’s become more efficient. And even though he destroyed colombia in the World Cup...it was still fun to see the dude ball out
I conceptualize this as what game would I watch if all the greats were playing on the same day. 1: Messi, 2: Liverpool as a whole, 3: Haaland (very specific to this moment but his rate of goal scoring is insane). Otherwise I'd go with De Bruyne at 3.
Liverpool fan. My favorite player is Firmino. Second is hard to say. For the purposes of this question, my third favorite player is Thomas Müller.
Ah, the good old space interpreter himself ‘Ramdeuter’
I think your third favorite is in a way the most expressive you might get to be. Your first and inevitably second will get compared by others, picked apart for why you chose them, etc. Third you just get to breathe. Rival team player, player with no trophies, journeymen, unsung heroes.
Guti for me.
Quaresma and his outside foot.
Robben and his left foot.
Give me extreme tech. Give me dribblers, wonder shot takers, give me beauty. Give me a casual rabona on November Sunday morning. Idc if your team loses and fails miserably.
Your third-favorite footballer is a journeyman superstar. Maybe they played for your team, maybe they didn't. Definitely had a successful international career. They're flashy, but not Ronaldinho flashy. A workmanlike brilliance. Very likely to become a commentator.
My third-favorite player is Michael Ballack.
Ballack played basically 100 matches for Germany, Leverkusen, Bayern, and Chelsea. A perfect balance.
For me it's players who either are always fighting and giving it all despite maybe not being the best footballers. So for example (I'm from Germany) Gerald Asamoah (Schalke 04), Robert Huth, Jonas Hector (FC Köln) internationally somebody like Kante or Puyol. Or its those lazy geniuses who should be among the best but just never quite make it like payet, riquelme, van der vaart or in germany somebody like Mario Basler
Ryan Giggs.
1. Messi 2. Neymar. And third I gotta go with Pogba. Can he be inconsistent and sometimes tough to manage. Definitely. But oh man is he fun to watch when he’s on form. When he’s on form there is no one that can touch him
All time- Suarez, Currently: Trent Alexander Arnold
The player who hurts the team you support while playing beautifully but not quite enough to beat you. If Southampton would have signed Minamino, there could have been a large enough sample size for it to be him.
For me, it’s Lorenzo Insigne. He’s fun to watch and fun to play with on FIFA.
Probably Traore for me. That is very subject to change, however.
Third favorite is an incredibly talented player who for some reason, typically of his own doing, never reached his full potential. Every time they go on a run of good form you convince yourself this is the start of them fulfilling their potential.
For me those players are James Rodriguez and Juan Fernando Quintero
I feel like third favorite for me is all about grudging respect. It’s that player that you find yourself emotionally rooting for but get mad at yourself logically when you catch yourself doing it. For me, that’s Sergio Aguero. He seems so down to Earth, positive, and is incredibly skilled. It’s hard not to love his passion when he scores one of his bangers, even if it is for Man City.
On this definition a third favourite might well be the best player from a rival team - eg ‘I hate Spurs but I can’t help admiring Son’, or ‘I’m gutted Arsenal one but you can’t argue with that finish from Aubameyang’. A more interesting category (fourth favourite? Hate favourites?) would be the players who are cartoonishly villainous but add something to the game - Diego Costa, Sergio Ramos, Mourinho on the managerial side...
Won, sorry
It's a tie between Toni Kroos and Sergio Ramos. Winning everything and being champions but doing so in their own unique ways. Kroos just being a lynchpin and slicing through opposition midfields with the occasional slick goal while Sergio Ramos just seeks and destroys lol
i would've said Lewondoski before the tiktok episode, now it's probably Modric.
lmao facts
Disco Isco
Currently?
Pierre Emerick Aubameyang.
I’ll watch that dude run, pass, score and celebrate any day.
Andrea Pirlo
David Beckham. Coincidentally, today is his birthday
Got a few different candidates. The divine ponytail himself, Roberto Baggio, who it must be said was a missed penalty kick away @ USA 94 from pulling a reasonable impersonation of Maradona in Mexico 86. A truly sublime player, and a certain type that I always gravitated towards: a bit of the enigmatic mercurial genius who almost certainly will clash with various coaches and shirk from his defensive duties but is equally capable of conjuring up a moment of game winning brilliance. His velvet touch was otherworldly. And his goal against Czechoslovakia in Italia 90 was a sneaky top 5 all time WC goal for me.
Next would be Xavi Hernandez. We all know his metronomic brilliance on the pitch bossing a game from midfield but what I weirdly loved about him was his almost dogmatic approach to refuse to play in any other way than the “I get the ball, I pass the ball” Barca way. It’s almost as if the result of the match wasn’t even as important as playing *their* way and stubbornly refusing to play any other way. Nothing crystallizes his worldview for me more than one occasion I remember - it might have been after the 7-0 2 leg thrashing by Bayern in the CL in 2013-ish where after the game when asked by reporters about the disastrous result and he said something like “we had 2 or 3 x more completed passes than them” as if that was supposed to matter. 😂 for whatever reason it’s always cracked me up.
And finally gotta go with a fella whose greatness never seems to have gotten it’s just due - David Silva. To me he’s the best to ever wear the City shirt. And to me he has been the beating heart of their last decade of dominance in the prem. It’s weird to me that he’s never properly appreciated. More than even Aguero, Kompany, Yaya Toure,or the more recent players like De Bruyne, Sterling etc, when I think back on this era of City playing some of the best football, the guy I will always think of, rightly or wrongly, is David Silva. Full disclosure: I’m not a city supporter and I say this as a neutral, even someone who doesn’t think they’ve been great for the game In general as far as the financial doping and how it basically allows the likes of city or PSG to buy whomever as they essentially have an endless amount of $$. It helps that he seems a genuinely good bloke, an unselfish player and a humble role model.
Honorable mentions : Michael Laudrup ( YouTube him youngsters), Djkorkaeff, and the great doctor himself, Socrates.
Blimey, I’ve forgotten Stoitchkov. Him too.
1. Salah 2. Messi 3. KDB
I think another quality is that they aren’t usually the best player at their club, and (this might overlap a lot with the virtue-signaling point) you know your other soccer buddies probably won’t pick the same guy. Mine is Neves.
Aye, Neves is a good shout.