2008 World Football XI — Part I

1st of all, Happy New Year to you and may 2009 be as excit­ing and intrigu­ing as 2008. This past year was wit­ness to some great moments and some truly his­toric per­for­mances from Liga De Quito’s mon­u­men­tal Lib­er­ta­dores vic­tory to Spain shak­ing off their under­achiev­ers label with their impres­sive Euro 2008 title to Argentina repeat­ing as Olympic cham­pi­ons. Many great play­ers kept us sus­pended to our chairs or sofas or bar stools and made us real­ize that soc­cer play­ers are the true sports magi­cians. As a fan of offense the 2008 WCB World XI will have a 3–5-2 look to it. That said, here are the magi­cians the 2008 WCB World XI:

Goal­keeper:
Iker Casil­las

This is a no brainer, Real Madrid’s portero is the best in the world and my choice for Bal­lon D’Or and FIFA World Player of the Year, refer here. He was bril­liant in the Euros as he anchored a Span­ish defense that was not given enough credit for La Furia Roja’s cham­pi­onship.

Defense:
On the right Barcelona’s Dani Alves.
 
The Brazil­ian defender has been the best & most used of Barcelona’s ’08 sum­mer sign­ings. He is obvi­ously an attack minded right back (what Brazil­ian defender isn’t) but he is an under­rated defender and for all his attack­ing, he is not a defen­sive liability.

In the mid­dle is Man­ches­ter United’s Nemanja Vidic. 
 
Sir Alex’s Ser­bian Min­is­ter of Defense, Vidic might be Fergie’s best sign­ing since he acquired Ruud Van Nis­tel­rooy from PSV in 2001. It is quite pos­si­ble that Vidic is Man­ches­ter United’s most valu­able player even more than Cris­tiano Ronaldo. Not only is he a rock in the back, he’s shown a knack for scor­ing timely goals ask Hull City, Sun­der­land, and Gamba Osaka.

On the left is another Blau­grana defender, Cata­lan icon Car­les Puyol.
 
The Barcelona cap­tain is a nat­ural cen­ter back but he’s so good that he can play any posi­tion on the back­line and has. His part­ner­ship with Valencia’s Car­los Marchena in the mid­dle of the Span­ish defense was crit­i­cal in Spain’s Euro suc­cess. Puyol man­aged to keep Barca’s back­line ser­vice­able when Lil­lian Thu­ram & Gabi Mil­ito were con­sis­tently get­ting burned dur­ing the 07–08 sea­son. You can’t have a a Best XI defense with­out Car­les Puyol.

Mid­field­ers:
Let’s begin with the cen­tral mid­field and the men that back up the attack­ing play­ers.  They don’t get as much atten­tion as the attack­ing play­ers but their teams would suck with­out them. 

Xavi
 
The player of the tour­na­ment for Euro 2008 and many people’s choice for the Bal­lon D’Or.  He is not spec­tac­u­lar but he does every­thing well. He has been Barcelona’s sav­ior on many occa­sions and is mainly respon­si­ble for Barcelona being able to play in the Cham­pi­ons League despite the drama sur­round­ing the team dur­ing the 07–08 season. 

Sebastián Battaglia

Boca Juniors were recently crowned Aper­tura cham­pi­ons after a dra­matic 3-team play­off.  The fact they made it to that point is a credit to coach Car­los Ischia and Battaglia.  With­out goal scor­ing icon Mar­tin Palermo and pub­lic bick­er­ing amongst team­mates, Battaglia helped to keep the team together on & off the pitch.  With a young group of tal­ent forced into action, Boca’s #5 was the vet­eran pres­ence in the mid­field that helped Los Xeneizes become champions. El Pibe De Oro needs to include him for Los Albice­lestes in World Cup qualifying.

In Part II, we’ll reveal the guys who get the goals, glory, and the women.  The attack­ing play­ers will be revealed in Part II as well as the DT.  

Tagged as: 2008 World Football XI, Barcelona, Dani Alves, Iker Casillas, Puyol, Sebastian Battaglia, Xavi