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Originally Posted by ISiddiqui
Well, I'll put it this way, I consider Zidane's creativity and vision on the field to be a far greater than you do. To the point where it offsets (and in many cases goes beyond) his lack of goal scoring. It's not scientific, but the fact that he has been rated so highly (and won FIFA Player of the Year 3 times) without the high level of scoring usually attributed to other all-time forwards and midfielders shows that his other qualities were otherworldly, or at least they were considered to be such by the people who vote on such things.
So I'm not sure that you look at Charlton or Guillet as attacking MF depending on the role you want your attacking MF to play. Personally, I'd pick Zidane anyday over both of them, because I consider that creative spark to be that great in Zidane.
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Otherworldly compared to contemporary players isn't quite the same as otherworldly compared to all-time greats. If you look over the course of history then nearly every attacking MF in the discussion has wonderful vision and creativity, and the ones at the Platini level have the same otherworldy vision. And they score a lot more. So Zidane's the best AM of his era, but pretty clearly not the best ever - which means that when you're comparing him to players who
are at the very top of their positions, he comes off poorly.
He's an incredibly popular player, yes, but there are several factors contributing to that which aren't directly related to his quality as a player. For one, he tends to save his goals for the finals of tournaments - the '98 World Cup and the '02 CL spring to mind. For another, he's one of the most enjoyable players in recent memory to watch. For a third, Real put on a major press blitz when they signed him - part of the whole "Galactico" strategy. So most polls will overrate his performance slightly because he does have a lot of non-performance-related factors enhancing his visibility.
That's not to say he doesn't deserve those awards; he definitely deserved the 2003 award and was probably the best of three excellent candidates in 2000. Ronaldo was better in '98, but two completely legitimate World Player of the Year awards is pretty impressive. On the other hand, Ronaldo's got two legit awards even without '98 (his 2002 win is an even better example than the '98 award of the voters just handing the award to the WC Final matchwinner). Why is Zidane the best of the era and not Ronaldo?
Say you're setting up a team like the current Chelsea one. In that formation, you want your AMs to be able to score because you're not getting as much from your lone striker - though if you're playing an all-time team with Eusebio or Pele up front then maybe that's not the case. Anyway, for that sort of team scoring ability is essential and defensive ability is also very helpful. That's not Zidane's game. He needs more support from the other midfielders and better play from the forwards than someone like Charlton or Gullit.