Brief 47: Best footballers I've seen

In the prolonged absence of live sport, I've been thinking about the best footballers I've seen in the flesh. I've never been a prolific football match attender. Being taken by one's father is a common way into that, and my dad was a rugby man, so we spent many afternoons at Sunbury watching London Irish, but not football. I also supported Spurs and lived in Ealing which was a pretty forbidding journey, did not have vast amounts of spare cash, and was playing sport myself most Saturday afternoons growing up.

I did manage a nice smattering of games as a kid, going to Plough Lane, Craven Cottage, White Hart Lane once or twice, Loftus Road. and Griffin Park. At school, though of course you had your Liverpool and Man Utd supporters, in terms of regular attendance, the main pockets of people I was friends with were for Wimbledon, Brentford and QPR (later Fulham). I don't recall that many regularly going to Highbury or White Hart Lane, and very few kids supported Chelsea full-stop. It just wasn't really done.

I could/should certainly have gone to more Brentford games - i had friends who went and it was within walking distance and hardly prohibitively expensive.

I've kept a lot of the programmes and have been able to go through some of the line-ups of games I went to. More by luck than judgement, I've happened to see several of my all-time favourite footballers, and a really good collection of world-class talent.

In terms of performance on the day, I remember Cesc Fabregas being brilliant when I watched Arsenal play Blackburn in around 2009, really liking the Bulgarian Martin Petrov when he was playing for Man City against Fulham, and have never forgotten Lee Clark captaining and scoring a hat-trick for England U15s in 1988. Clark would go on to be a good but not great footballer, probably one of the best of his generation not to play for the full England side.

I'm struck, looking back, at how many fine players QPR and Notts Forest had in the late 80s. I also noticed that when I watched some Olympic football in 2012, not only did Team GB have Bellamy, Ramsey and Giggs (who I mainly went for) but it was a double-header on the day, and we were able to watch Senegal-Uruguay before the GB game, and that meant Sadio Mane, Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani.

I'm going to pick one XI (for balance), then add to the squad:

G David Seaman

RB Paul Parker 

CB Des Walker

CB Thomas Vermaelen

LB Stuart Pearce

RM Gareth Bale

CM Paul Gascoigne

CM Luka Modric

LM Ryan Giggs

Striker Matt Le Tissier

Striker Gary Lineker

Also saw, Suarez, Cavani, Mane, Fabregas, Van Persie, Anelka, Ray Wilkins, Les Ferdinand, Kenny Sansom, Chris Waddle, Rosicky, Walcott, Arshavin, Petrov, Nzonzi, Chris Hughton, Jimmy Case, three Wallaces, Gary Mabbutt, Shaka Hislop, Chris Coleman, Roy Wegerle, Alan MacDonald, Clive Allen, Steve Hodge, Neil Webb, Nigel Clough, Vinnie Jones, Dennis Wise, Fashanu, David Healy, Aaron Ramsey, Craig Bellamy, Kaspar Schmeichel, Gary Speed, El Hadji, Gael Clichy, William Gallas, Abou Diaby amongst several others

Pretty good bunch.