Thetownend.com

I'll start a thread so we can use it as a shortlist, then do a poll to declare the winner

For me it has to be Fabio Cannavaro.

Gives hope to short arses eveywhere that despite all the odds I may turn out to be a world class centre back. Alternativly I may just stay as a rubbish defensive midfielder/ office worker :|

2. Phillipe Lahm - quality everytime I saw him
3. Genaro Gattuso - bearded midfield terrier

zidane, pirlo and klose.

klose looks so ordinary but he notches up goals for fun.

Yep Fab was fab.  He wins it for me.

I have a mention for Hargreaves - if he were in from the start he may well have been in with a shout - his perfomance against Cuntugal was one of the stand out individual performances of the tounament.

Kaka, riquelme, and dair i say it, ronaldo. he may be a little shit, but you have to admit that at times he carried the portugese(sp).

Buffon's been fantastic in the Italian goal as well, he's probably been my player of the tournament.

Like you say Lahm was awesome, I also thought Frings upped his game for Germany. Maxi Rodriguez also impressed me, especially with all of the talk about Riquelme.

All of those mentioned above have had good games, but have been too inconsistant to be considered for player of the tournament in my opinion, with the exception of Pirlo & buffon

I'm starting to sound like an eyetie now. Wheres my pencil beard trimmer? :D

don't think you could say klose was inconsistent, zidane definitely was though.

materazzi is worth a shout, he's a player i have a love/hate relationship with. i love him for the fact he's a cunt but i also hate him for it  :D

...which was why I said Hargreaves may have been in with a shout - Euro 2008 perhaps.  Mind you, now that he's shown he can do it Phil Neville will probably be brought in to show us all how not to do it again.

Still back to 2006 - I didn't think anyone apart from maybe ZZ came close to Cannavaro and I'm affraid his antics in the final put paid to his chances for me.

Think it's a reflection of tactics employed that we're struggling myself.

Pundit of th wc goes to O'Niel for me btw - what the hell was he talking about for the past 4 weeks?

Fair enough. Like you say though, hes so medicore most of the time but his WC goals record speaks for itself.

Matterazzi certainly had the most eventful world cup, 2 goals, a red card, giving a pen away in the final then making zizou's head explode with rage. Not bad for a centre back who wouldnt have got a game if Nesta was fit :)

someone posted a video of his fouls in serie a, it's quite something. the bloke's an animal.

I'd agree that Hargreaves put in one of the individual performances of the WC- he must be the fittest player in the tournament

:fag:

Ooh get you

its those curly locks :mrgreen:

Cannavaro
Lahm
Zidane/Riquelme/Klose


The german press spent much of the build-up to the world cup calling Klose and Podolski 'Polish rats'.  Not having a competetive game for so long is bound to affect your performance, but then their press is much like ours.

Hargreaves was average in a poor side which made him look better.For a class holding midfielder look no further than Frings-player of the tourno for me-Germany would have beaten Italy if he'd not been suspended.Lahm was the discovery of the tournament for me.Other notables-Marquez,Cannavaro and I liked Frei of Switzerland.Top of the flops-Shevchenko,Ronaldinho and,yet again,Totti

I'd forgotten about Marquez, he was superb.

I feel compelled to use an emoti-thingy   :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:   He's an arrogant little shit, that cost Switzerland a goal against France by trying to handle it in the net when Djourou was better placed to head in, and you can guarantee for every 10 chances he gets 5 will blaze over the bar, 4 will go to one side, and the other might force a save.  Don't know how he has been top scorer in France.  I'm sure they took him off before the penalties because they thought you could rely on him to fuck it up - as it was the rest of the team had obviously been taking tips from him.

I'm sure Zidane helped france by getting the one match ban, so they knew they didn't have to rely on him, and then against Spain Zidane knew he had to play well , because they did OK without him.

Afraid my favourite has to be Maxi Rodriguez, not for the goal, but he looked dangerous every time he was on the ball.

cannavaro. it's like watching bobby more, but with slightly less forraging runs.

i thought lahm was well overrated to be honest. a left-back that can't kick with his left foot?! he should be playing for us!

cannovaro wins it for me. top player! will be interesting to see what he does if juve get demoted

Can you tell me when you boys plan to stop this Hargreaves love in?  Ok ok so he was pretty good against the average Portuguese but surely this hype is getting a little out of hand?

Maybe you could put it on hol duntil your qualifiers then who knows, normal service may resume.

Just fuck off somewhere else and talk about scotland then.

Your anti-English whinging is just fucking annoying now.  Your not even Scottish for fucks sake

No-one has said Hargreaves is the best player in the world, basically he just had a MOTM perfomance against the admittidly average portugese side.

So whats your point??

My point is one game doesn't turn an international flop into a superstar.  He had one good game, a large number of England fans were booing him at the start of the tournament, the press slagged Sven off for taking him in the squad, he then plays a good game against Portugal and fuck me he's the best thing since sliced bread.

If you can'[t have adecent debate about something Piemonte you're not the poster I thought you were.

As for my anti English whinging, I don't see it that way, I just see it as coming from a different angle.  Just ignore me if you can't handle it.

So 2 people think Hargreaves put in one of the better performances in the WC and the jock thinks this equates to a love in.

Even if it isn't anti-England whinging it sure comes across as jealousy. If you didn't want to hear about England all of the time then why stay here? You know what the media and fans are like!

And my point is no-one (especially me) is saying that Hargreves is a superstar. He had one exceptional game and a couple of competant ones.

His stock has risen due to his previous lame performances. Most people including myself were/are happy that he has started to show something like his club form for his adopted county.

I might have gone off on one there, but had to make the point regarding your constant anti-english sentiment as I had previously ignored it.

You've made some perfectly valid points about England in the past, but it just seems now that you are happy to believe that every english football fan shares the same opinions as the bullshit tabolid media

Pretty difficult to ignore if you want to catch up with the world cup on Sky or the BBC Si Pie.

I didn't mean you as in town enders by the way, I meant you as in England as a whole.

"You've made some perfectly valid points about England in the past, but it just seems now that you are happy to believe that every english football fan shares the same opinions as the bullshit tabolid media"

To be honest fella I often refer to the media as you rather than individuals, most of the england supporters I have spoken to during the tournament have been very reasonable.  It's the media I have my main gripe with, and it's predominantly them who have this "crush" on Owen hargreaves at the moment.  I'm actually quite happy for the bloke, I like to see the underdog prove the doubters wrong but feel the reaction to one decent game in x amount of years a little ott.

Oh I know that. But I meant as football fans they must be a close representation of the general population. Even my Welsh relatives slated Lampard but said Hargreaves had finally come good.

I think that's the problem with Britain - the media hypes things up and the thicker people agree with them. You only generally hear about those sorts of opinions because the other fans don't believe the hype and distance themselves from it.

EDIT: That's my 2nd hip hop lyric-drop of the day as well.

I would agree withthe welshies, but only go as far as say Hargreaves finally produced a good international performance.  Personally I think he will come good eventually as Bayern wouldn't have stuck by him if he was poor.  He needs a settled role in the England set up not stuck here and there when it suits the manager.

Yeah that's one of the reasons I was disappointed with his inclusion in the squad initially - he never played well because he was fucked around by Sven.

I thought Essien was good in his 3 games, A real shame he was banned against Brazil.

Got to be Cannavaro.  For a guy that short to excel at centre half speaks volume for his ability to read the game.  The guy oozes class.

Am I the only one that thought Riquelme was a bit of a let down?

he was good against weaker opposition, but went missing against Germany and was rightly subbed

was hargreaves ever that awful for england? certainly not as bad as the criticism he received.

i'd say anyone who lambasted hargreaves has fallen into the same trap you speak of re:his good performance against portugal. he never set the world alight but he wasn't bad either, against Portugal he was superb.

Riquelme has an impressive reputation, if he was half as good as the hype that surrounds him he'd be world class.  I thought he was a disappointment, he was also pretty average against the Arse in the Champions league, summed up by his weak as piss penalty.

Essien and Makelele were both better than Ballack.Drogba and Crespo both better than Shevchenko and Maniche better than Lampard-whoops Chelsea!

Best players probably Cannavaro, Gattuso and Pirlo....

as for Hargreaves....you dont end up with 9 winners medals at the age of 25 for being shit....

pirlo followed by zidane and cannavaro for me

the red card doesn't change how good zz looked sometimes, i think its daft that people say the award should be changed. ok he was a twat but thats 30 seconds out of hours.

CONGRATULATIONS FABIO

You have won the prestious TEF World cup 2006 Player of the Tournament award.

Your prizes for this great honour include:

- A free transfer to Swindon Town
- Free accomodation in Swindon in my spare room (please dont shag my mrs even though she quite fancies you :x )
- The chance to play alongside legendary defenders like Jerl Ifool - you can never stop learning can you?
- The obliagtory free date with STFCbird.
- Free calender "the roundabouts of Swindon"
- A remote controlled Dalek to scare off your new team mate CyberGurney.


Again, congratulations on your achievement.