the best centre forward in the world

i think it's safe to assume that a world xi wouldn't play 4-4-2 in 2011, as j-wils suggests today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/apr/12/the-question-fernando-torres-chelsea/print

if we're voting for "best" i'm sticking with eto'o

but i would probably rather center my xi around an erratic nonchalant slav so that makes it berba or ibra

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/hr/thumb/6/60/9_Kalinic.JPG/200px-9_Kalinic.JPG

drogba

Villa, then Eto'o

None of the above.

k doyle

the list doesn't have ngog on it..??

ngog bebe ngog

Ibby. Then in all honesty, if fitness were no question, van Persie. Then Villa, Eto'o, Tevez.

Important players missing from the list imo: Neymar, Mata, Hulk&Falcao, Lopez, Barrios and Raul imo.

Villa or Eto'o I think. My answer would've been Drogba for several years but he's probably past his best now. I love Milito but fear he's going to be perennially underrated.

Real deal for the future = Cavani over Super Mario.

Yeah, the Drog would have prob'ly got my vote but time marches on... really don't know who to vote for now. Love to see Ibra + Berba in the same team...

'Real' deal for the future = Pato for £35m and Kaka in the summer of 2012.

villa...tho messi getting 48 goals kinda makes a mockery of the position of cf anyway...

villa hasn't scored in nine games now. zlatan wasn't that rubbish even when pep refused to play him.

zlatan always fucks up when it matters. villa has won a world cup and a euro champs, and played well in both.

Important players missing from the list imo: Neymar, Mata, Hulk&Falcao, Lopez, Barrios and Raul imo.

― popular gay automobile (a hoy hoy), Wednesday, 13 April 2011 12:49 (2 hours ago)

the best centre forward in the world

Poll Closing Date: Tuesday, 19 April 2011 00:00 (in 5 days)

How much longer will Dzeko have to go on being shit before we stop bothering to put him in this bracket?

nah he's certainly in the top couple of dozen

don't think he is good enough to ever get into the eto'o, villa, torres, drogba level

Illa illa illa

Would like to see cavani on a big stage tho

A friend of mine claimed that Lazio v Napoli the other week was the most exciting football match he'd ever seen and that Cavani was running tings.

srsly impressive that uruguay with all of 4m inhabitants is second only to argentina in this list

sonderangerbot made the same claim on here iirc xp - was a late-morning game for some reason so only a handful of viewers saw it, it may be the indian rope trick of football matches for all I know

Important players missing from the list imo: Neymar, Mata, Hulk&Falcao, Lopez, Barrios and Raul imo.

― popular gay automobile (a hoy hoy), Wednesday, 13 April 2011 12:49 (2 hours ago)

the best centre forward in the world

Poll Closing Date: Tuesday, 19 April 2011 00:00 (in 5 days)

― The Geirogeirgegege (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 13 April 2011 15:13 (2 hours ago)

And yet Cavani makes it?

yeah cuz he is i) a centre forward, which neymar and mata aren't and ii) has just scored 25 in 31 for napoli and is probably the player of the season in italy, so it is at least vaguely feasible that someone might vote for him

like me

love a uruguayan forward me

<3

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

hat trick for gomez today. this poll is hard.

it's eto'o!

Drogba is back.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Saw Cavani oveer the weekend. Meh.

he's shit hot. was his first game back from suspension and the team underperformed. he's a total talisman for that club.

forgot to vote

rooney 2

lol

shoulda voted for berba

can't remember why i voted forlan but heartened someone else did

c ronaldo robbed

Option Votes
ibrahimovic 3
rooney 2
van persie 1
eto'o 0

Shame on you for this.

Too many underwhelming names there for a 'best in the world' poll. Obviously I didn't vote for him either, but pretty sure Eto'o is the right answer. When darragh was expressing doubts the other night about whether Villa is the right spearhead for Barca, I got to thinking about who is actually the right guy for them and I reckon it's still Eto'o.

tough gig though, the barca point man job. You have to be a back-to-goal player, really, cos of the limited space left ahead of you once messi, pedro have taken up their advanced positions, so eto'o's pace is kinda wasted. You still have to score goals to avoid the pressure of being the main striker at the world's best footballing side with shit stats. You have to be able to fit in with intricate one-touch play, cos that's the bread and butter.

It's probably villa, really.

Cosign that. Villa has 17 goals in 25 appearances for Barca, I don't think you can really call that underperforming other than by stratospheric standards.

Seems like he hasn't played that much though - has he been injured or just been on the bench a lot?

barca website says he's played in 30 out of 31 league games?

My stats came from Wikipedia so yeah probably wrong.

There is something about Villa... I mean, sure, he can score in big important games... I mean sure he is fast, technically sound, can score or assist from anywhere and at any time... I mean, sure, he has broken Raul's Spain record and has never really had a bad season in years... but he just doesn't seem like the right pick, you know?

I think I've got it in my head that the best centre forward in the world at any one time should be like Ronaldo or Henry or Drogba were at their best - unstoppable beasts who could still make something beautiful. Villa just seems like another cog in the machine, albeit a v. good one in the best machine ever created. I voted Ibby, and maybe last season I would have voted Eto'o or Drogba, because you want to watch a team to see the great striker who leads a team and wows you, instead of watching a team and seeing the guy that helps Messi and Pedro have space in the box.*

*I know Zlatan and Thierry have suffered from this too. Maybe Eto'o was lucky to play pre-Pep with Guily instead of Messi for most of his Barca career. Or maybe none of this makes sense anywhere other than my head.

agree with all of it, tbh, even tho it's clearly mental iygwim

yay i voted Villa. he's the most beautiful, tbh. effectiveness be damned

zlatan is so often just a dull hoofer. tbf.

^^^^and to think this guy once taught our nations children about sport ;_;

Zlatan's a tempremental bottler who can be sublime.

yeah berbatov any day ahead of him tbh.

one of those old fashioned bottlers who has scored and performed in many big matches (an el clasico winner in a game where messi and ronaldo looked a bit rubbish!) to go on and win like 400 league titles in a row.

haha sam...come on, he has failed to impress in so many big moments. that doesn't qualify you for best in the world imo...unless you're an arsenal fan (you deserve this for that children's sports remark!)

he isn't consistent, if he was nobody would be having this conversation.

We're not having the old Is Ibrahimovic a Bottler argument again are we?

Don't get the ILX love for Zlatan. Put me in the O'Neill camp for once in my life.

unless you're an arsenal fan

Ouch!

he's been dining off a few ludicrous incidents for years, the goal against nac, that pass with his back, and the kung fu related flick which i can't fully remember.

the 'scoring 20+ goals a season every season'

why not just name darren bent in that case

or rooney

because darren bent doesn't make teams win leagues?

i've never seen anything myself to convince me that ibrahimovic hasn't just been lucky to play for the best possible teams at the best possible times tbph

well he made sulley muntari and marco matterazi look like he played for one of the best possible teams so

ghana/italy?

decent trick alright

sb'ing everyone but sam