My Football Mount Rushmore

Every football fan has that list: the one you defend in group chats, the one that starts friendly debates at the pub, the one that makes your friends roll their eyes because you’ve brought it up again. Well, here’s mine: five players who’ve given me the most joy, frustration, and most importantly - sheer disbelief over the years. And yes, I’m a Barcelona fan, so you already know some of these picks come with a little extra bias.

Lionel Messi

Where do you even start? There’s nothing left to say about Messi that hasn’t been said, and yet somehow every time he touches the ball it feels like a new sentence. What I love most isn’t the goals (though, yes, those goals). It’s the way he sees the game three seconds before anyone else: the pass nobody else spotted; the dribble that shouldn’t work against three defenders and yet does. Watching Messi is like watching someone play chess while everyone else plays checkers, and I feel lucky to have watched it live rather than just in highlight reels. As an FC Barcelona fan, I’ll never stop being grateful that the best years of his career, including the 2008-12 years under Pep that made Barca undefeatable.

Robert Lewandowski

If Messi is poetry, Lewandowski is engineering, and I mean that as the highest compliment. There’s something deeply satisfying about a number nine who does exactly what he’s supposed to do, only better than anyone. The positioning, the movement, the finishing with either foot, the headers. Five goals in nine minutes is the kind of thing you tell your grandkids about. He’s proof that relentless consistency and hard work can be just as awe-inspiring as raw genius. And seeing him bring that ruthlessness to Barca after everything he achieved in Germany has been a proper treat: we finally got the number 9 we’d been missing.

Antoine Griezmann

Griezmann might be the most intelligent player on this list. He’s never been the fastest or the flashiest, but watch him off the ball and you’ll see a player who reads the game like a novel he’s already finished. He drops deep, links play, defends when he has to, and pops up with big goals when it matters most. The 2018 World Cup was his masterpiece. He’s the kind of player who makes everyone around him better, and honestly, every team needs a Griezmann.

David Luiz: Chaos, But Make It Art

Okay, hear me out: David Luiz is not on this list because he’s the most reliable defender in history. He’s here because football is entertainment, and nobody understood that better than David Luiz. The marauding runs from centre-back, the 60-yard diagonals, the free-kicks, the tackles: either genius or disaster, with absolutely no middle ground. He played every match like it was a cup final and he’d bet his house on it. And let’s not forget: he was genuinely brilliant in that 2012 Champions League run and the 2014 World Cup until… well, you know. Football needs characters, and David Luiz is a character.

Neymar: The Showman

Neymar is the player who makes you gasp and groan within the same ten seconds, sometimes with the same touch. The pure audacity of his game (the rainbow flicks, the elasticos, the dribbles that seem designed to humiliate) is exactly why I watch football. Yes, he goes down easily; yes, the drama is exhausting. But when he’s on song, he’s unplayable, and the Santos and Barcelona versions of Neymar were some of the most electric football I’ve ever seen. That MSN front three is still the most fun I’ve ever had watching football - the best version of football I think anyone can achieve - being selfless. He played like the game was supposed to be fun, and to be honest, more players should.

The common thread

Looking at this list, I notice something: none of these players are boring. Five completely different ways to be brilliant at football, and that’s exactly why I love this sport. There’s no single right way to play it.

And yes, being a Barca fan definitely shaped this list. Three of these five gave me some of my best memories in blue and red, and the other two are exactly the kind of players you’d want in a Barça shirt anyway.

Who’s on your list?