Sports Illustrated has a new club ranking out:
1. Olympique Lyonnais
2. Barcelona
3. Valencia
4. Chelsea
5. Manchester United
6. Boca Juniors
7. AS Roma
8. Arsenal
9. São Paulo
10. SC Internacional
My thoughts on this:
Kudos for ranking Lyon tops and not falling prey to a complicated ranking system like the one bogging down the IFFHS these days. Going with gut is definitely the way to rank teams, not a weighted calculus equation. So let’s break down the teams.
Lyon have won their league 5 years running, are currently ahead in Ligue 1, and comprehensively defeated Real Madrid and Steaua Bucaresti in the Champions League. Juninho is ridiculously good and Wiltord is making a case for himself as one of France’s finest strikers. Barcelona, on the other hand, have just lost Eto’o and despite winning 3-1 on the weekend, that’s got to count for something. Good call dropping them to second. The third choice, Valencia, is where I find my first problem. Yes, Valencia are doing better in their domestic league than Chelsea, but gut instinct tells me that if the Blues met Los Ches (on a neutral ground, before anyone even suggests Stamford Bridge), it would be Mourinho who would walk out with the slight sneer that passes for a smile on his face, not Flores. That’s why I’d reverse those two.
That brings me to number 5, ManU. Solidly placed, I believe, after their form dipped a bit. At 6 we find our first non-European club: Boca Juniors. Six is a tad too high. To say that Boca Juniors are better than all but five of the clubs in the world seems dubious, but I’ll let it stand as fairly accurate.
Spot 7 intruiges me mightily. AS Roma are the only Italian side that makes the list, but why do they? I realize that it’s probably pretty hard to rank a team like Milan as high as 7 in the world (especially with the sort of curse that the off-season’s intrigues seems to have put on them), but Roma doesn’t strike me as better than Milan, much less better than the other teams on the list. Drop them to 11 or 12, I think and place Milan in the top 10.
Arsenal at 8 is fairly accurate, I think, if you’re looking at what they might do in the future. From there I just plainly disagree. 9 and 10 are not worthy of their spots there. Perhaps Sao Paulo, but only if we’re getting desperate. Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Werder Bremen, Sevilla, even Inter Milan spring to mind before Sao Paulo and Internacional.
October 7, 2006 at 2:15 am |
Nothing much to complain on these rankings. Looks like the rankings have been made to reflect the domestic performance than the European games.