017 - Zizou
016 - Diego Maradona
For me, Messi is the greatest. His greatness has ballooned and developed against a backdrop of a sky high mural, occupying the full height of culture and history, depicting Diego Maradona. So to have enjoyed Messi for so long, I’ve had to squint on the foreground to keep the looming Diego out of focus.
That is the measure of Maradona, he’s the player that footballs dog eared fans use as the milestone. They don’t care so much about Messi and his achievements because look what Diego did.
He hopped and dodged with the ball in tow, skipping repeatedly through midfield no man’s lands with tackles scattered like landmines, a frog jumping through the roving blades of a combine harvester like it was a skip rope.
He did it when there was no support structure around mercurial talents, like scaffolding around a statue only for it to be revealed when the final form is ready.
No, from day one Maradona was like a fillet of meat floating through water with every hungry scavenger coming up and nibbling at will.
And he still did it, he still produced magic.
015 - Steve Staunton
I first gained awareness of Steve Staunton when I saw him burning to a crisp under the glaring sunshine of World Cup 94. To trump the sting of sunburn he donned a peak cap, the only player I’ve ever seen doing this bar goalies in August in the Premier League (a side note: sunny days are one of the worst weather conditions for a football match to be played in and watched. On broadcast the pitch is half mega-saturated green grass and the other is a black void into which players momentarily disappear until the camera exposure rectifies.) To this day if I see a photo of him, a sausage on a frying pan soundscape will loop eerily in my head, simulating the experience of seeing him pinken towards a bold purplish red as the rough New Jersey sun had its way with his naive Dundalk skin.
You can watch a 30 second time-lapse of this artwork being created here.
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014 - Luka Modrić
In 2015 the brilliant football journalist, Barney Ronay, described Luka Modrić as resembling ‘a young boy dressed as a witch’. It’s seven years later and the point still stands, which is to say, Luka Modrić remains a striking looking figure. More pertinently, we’re all still well aware of Luka Modrić. In 2015 we were also well aware of Modrić, so much so that jokes could be made of his appearance and people outside of football would know the context. My point is his longevity. You hear Modrić, you can picture him straight away. You can see his face, but also, I imagine, you can see the way he runs, the way he passes with the outside of his foot whenever he can make it work. The way he has won five champions leagues (that’s a good one to picture). His career has been an unbroken support strut shooting down the length of the past decade and a half.
Following his performance in the 2022 World Cup, the comments praising him began to include gilded phrases people usually hold for the end of a glittering career. Words like ‘truly’ were being placed before compliments, which is when you know football commentators really mean business. These positive remarks are a fine and sparkling gold filigree, a decorative flourish applied to the borders of our shared understanding of what Modrić is and has become; truly, one of the greats.
You can watch a 30 second time-lapse of this artwork being created here.