How many countries in the world have a footballer as their best ever male sportsman?

[oneteaminglasgow]

56 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

On to Algeria and their post-independence football team is an interesting one. They were the team which missed out on qualifying from their world cup group when West Germany and Austria kicked it about for 80 minutes, and lots of the players from the 80s team ultimately won the 1990 African Cup of Nations which Algeria was hosting for the first time. 

Rabah Madjer - Wikipedia played for Porto in the 80s and won lots of league titles and the 1987 European Cup. 

Lakhdar Belloumi - Wikipedia is their most capped player and was voted the 4th best African player of the century, although he spent his whole playing career in Algeria.

Riyad Mahrez - Wikipedia is the other obvious candidate and I don't know how you compare these three guys together given when and where they've played. 

Consider this a dress rehearsal - is Messi better than Maradona? Is Mahrez better than these other people from the past?

Outside of football your best bet seems to be middle distance runner Taoufik Makhloufi - Wikipedia who won a gold at London 2012 and two silvers at Rio 2016. Any thoughts?

Your best bet outside football is possibly Noureddine Morceli - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noureddine_Morceli. Just one Olympic gold for him, but 3 consecutive world championship gold medals in the 1500m, and held five separate distance world records at the same time from the looks of it. 

Edit: At any rate, I'd be tempted to go for one of the middle distance runners over the footballers here. 

Edited July 17, 2021 by oneteaminglasgow

[Merkie84]

I would go morceli.

A seriously top class athlete. 

[eez-eh]

9 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

The list in the OP comes from the wikipedia page "List of Sovereign States," for whatever that's worth. 

I think it would make sense to include any country that’s a FIFA member as well. The good people of P&B need to know who Montserrat’s best ever sportsman is.

[Marten]

It probably makes most sense to use the list of FIFA members + sovereign states that aren't FIFA members. These are: Monaco, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Tuvalu.

Edited July 18, 2021 by Marten

[Nightmare]

11 hours ago, eez-eh said:

I think it would make sense to include any country that’s a FIFA member as well. The good people of P&B need to know who Montserrat’s best ever sportsman is.

On the football side, that seems to quite comfortably be Lyle Taylor. He’s their top all time scorer after only playing 11 matches.

[Monkey Tennis]

On 17/07/2021 at 09:41, Marten said:

How do you determine "best ever" between an amazing football player and an amazing swimmer?

By picking the football player.

[Highland Capital]

Jesper Gronkjaer - Greenland

[Miguel Sanchez]

3 hours ago, Marten said:

It probably makes most sense to use the list of FIFA members + sovereign states that aren't FIFA members. These are: Monaco, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Tuvalu.

 

12 hours ago, eez-eh said:

I think it would make sense to include any country that’s a FIFA member as well. The good people of P&B need to know who Montserrat’s best ever sportsman is.

This is a fair point.

[Miguel Sanchez]

18 hours ago, oneteaminglasgow said:

Your best bet outside football is possibly Noureddine Morceli - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noureddine_Morceli. Just one Olympic gold for him, but 3 consecutive world championship gold medals in the 1500m, and held five separate distance world records at the same time from the looks of it. 

Edit: At any rate, I'd be tempted to go for one of the middle distance runners over the footballers here. 

 

15 hours ago, Merkie84 said:

I would go morceli.

A seriously top class athlete. 

For Algeria...

IMO Madjer gets the nod over Mahrez so far, mainly for the European success with Porto. If Mahrez ever wins a Champions League I think it would switch quite quickly, but I also get the feeling if you asked an Algerian they'd pick one of the players from the 80s.

It's a decent argument whether any of those footballers compare to a runner who effectively dominated their specialist distance (plus some others in terms of times) for a prolonged period. I'm inclined to put the footballers ahead but I'll go with the consensus we have here.

[Marshmallo]

21 hours ago, oneteaminglasgow said:

Apparently, there’s an Albanian boxer (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florian_Marku) who’ll be fighting for the IBF international welterweight title in a few weeks time, which I assume is a big deal but have no idea really.

I’d still go with Cana as being their best, although there were presumably some great Albanian players in the past who weren’t allowed to leave Albania and are thus basically unheard of here. 

Marku isn't anything special at this stage 

[Miguel Sanchez]

American Samoa (big thanks for the suggestion to add all FIFA members) started playing football in 1983. Nicky Salapu - Wikipedia is their highest capped player with 22, and the highest level he ever played at was Austrian amateur.

Elsewhere, noted American diver Greg Louganis (4 Olympic titles) was born in American Samoa, but since he didn't represent them he doesn't count. In baseball we have Sean Manaea - Wikipedia and Tony Solaita - Wikipedia. Wikipedia also rather annoying lists a bunch of people in things like American football and boxing but they're all American and of Samoan descent, which I'm not counting either. Either way, one or both of those baseball players is clearly better than Salapu since they played at a much higher level and have been much more successful. I'm going for Manaea since he seems to have spent most of his pro career in MLB rather than minor leagues.

Andorra are captained by the 41 year old defender Ildefons Lima - Wikipedia who is also their leading scorer with 11 goals in 130 caps. He played a game for Espanyol's B team once. Andorra have a 19 year old goalkeeper in Villareal's C team, that's the sort of level we're dealing with here. 

They have no Olympic medallists. Hocine Haciane - Wikipedia represented them three times at the Olympics in swimming. They have a rugby team too which doesn't seem to be any good. I'm voting for the footballer, purely for longevity. 

Angola have Flávio Amado - Wikipedia as their leading cap holder (91) and Akwá - Wikipedia as their leading scorer (39). Both played in Angola's only World Cup appearance in 2006. At club level it looks like a toss-up between the two, although Akwa managed some games for Benfica once. 

The only other sport they seem half decent at is basketball: Angola men's national basketball team - Wikipedia. Carlos Morais (basketball) - Wikipedia once signed a contract with the Toronto Raptors and has won 4 AfroBasket titles, the African basketball championship. It feels like a toss-up between the two sides here so I'll open this one up. Any thoughts?

[oneteaminglasgow]

7 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Angola have Flávio Amado - Wikipedia as their leading cap holder (91) and Akwá - Wikipedia as their leading scorer (39). Both played in Angola's only World Cup appearance in 2006. At club level it looks like a toss-up between the two, although Akwa managed some games for Benfica once. 

The only other sport they seem half decent at is basketball: Angola men's national basketball team - Wikipedia. Carlos Morais (basketball) - Wikipedia once signed a contract with the Toronto Raptors and has won 4 AfroBasket titles, the African basketball championship. It feels like a toss-up between the two sides here so I'll open this one up. Any thoughts?

Manucho maybe a better shout for their best footballer (Manucho - Wikipedia). Signed by Man United when they weren't hilarious, didn't make it there but seems to have made a pretty decent career, with plenty of appearances in La Liga, albeit for some of the poorer sides in that league. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Oh that's definitely a shout and a winner.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Anguilla are similar to American Samoa with a goalkeeper as their highest capped player: Ryan Liddie - Wikipedia. They're also coached by Stern John, if you remember him. Seems like being the manager of one of these diddies would be a nice life.

Omari Banks - Wikipedia played cricket for the West Indies and it's not really a high bar to clear for the non-footballers here.

Antigua and Barbuda once looked like this:

Aaron Taylor-Sinclair currently plays for them. It looks like a toss up between Peter Byres (93) who has the most caps and Derrick Edwards who has the most goals (59). There's also Kerry Skepple - Wikipedia who scored the winning goal over Haiti which sent them to the highest stage of World Cup qualifying they've ever reached. I'm inclined to vote for Peter Byers - Wikipedia since he played at the highest level out of them, spending a few seasons in MLS with Montreal. 

They're also one of the West Indies countries (I've also just discovered what the West Indies are). Viv Richards - Wikipedia is someone who did some cricket and seemed quite good at it, so it's an easy win for him. 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Miguel Sanchez

[RossBFaeDundee]

Wayne Gretzky is surely Canada's greatest ever sportsman, arguably one of the most dominant sportsman in his field ever. He doesn't blow absolutely every hockey player away, as Canada also have the great Mario Lemieux (who probably could have been greater than Gretzky if he didn't have career-threatening back injuries and a cancer diagnosis during his career), but in terms of being the best Gretzky has the lot: 4 Stanley Cup rings, a near unbroken decade of Hart Trophies (MVP titles) and Art Ross Trophies (Scoring titles) in the 1980s, the only player to ever breach the 200 point barrier in the NHL in a single season, owner of dozens and dozens of records, most of which are untouchable, including most career points, most playoff points, most points, goals, and assists in individual seasons... hell, Gretzky has more assists (1,963) than the 2nd highest POINTS leader has in total points (1,921). Steve Nash was pretty dang good at basketball, but nobody ever touches Gretzky in Canada.

Canada's greatest footballer is probably already Alphonso Davies, and at 20 years old he is bound to have an excellent career, and could well bring about a renaissance in Canadian soccer (sorry). However, unless he becomes a mercurial talent the likes of Messi and Ronaldo, he'll never touch Gretzky, especially not in Canada.

[Bishop Briggs]

On 16/07/2021 at 23:50, Adamski said:

Using

[country name] most famous sportsman as a search in google will give you a decent guide.

Top answer by that method:

Scotland: Chris Hoy

England: Lewis Hamilton

Wales: Gareth Bale

Northern Ireland: Rory McIlroy

Ireland: Paul O'Connell

France: Zinedine Zidane

Spain: Rafael Nadal

Italy: Francesco Totti

Brazil: Pele

Argentina: Diego Maradona

Finland: Paavo Nurmi

Sweden: Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Norway: Marit Bjorgen

Denmark: Christian Eriksen

Belgium: Eden Hazard

Holland: Johan Cruyff

Fill your boots with the others.

Rory McIlroy is representing the Republic of Ireland at the Olympics.

Here are a few more suggestions.

Austria - Franz Klammer

Belgium - Eddie Merckx

Denmark - Peter Schmeichel ahead of Christian Eriksen for me.

Egypt - Mo Salah

Germany - Michael Schumacher

Hungary - Ferenc Puskas

Italy - many footballers to choose from in addition to Totti, e.g. Zoff, Maldini, Baresi, Pirlo

Phillipines - Manny Pacquiao

Portugal - Christiano Ronaldo

Romania - Gheorge Hagi

Serbia - Novak Djokovic

Sweden - Bjorn Borg

Ukraine - Wladimir Klitschko

USA - Mohammed Ali

Wales - Gareth Edwards

[Robin.Hood]

2 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Anguilla are similar to American Samoa with a goalkeeper as their highest capped player: Ryan Liddie - Wikipedia. They're also coached by Stern John, if you remember him. Seems like being the manager of one of these diddies would be a nice life.

Omari Banks - Wikipedia played cricket for the West Indies and it's not really a high bar to clear for the non-footballers here.

Antigua and Barbuda once looked like this:

Aaron Taylor-Sinclair currently plays for them. It looks like a toss up between Peter Byres (93) who has the most caps and Derrick Edwards who has the most goals (59). There's also Kerry Skepple - Wikipedia who scored the winning goal over Haiti which sent them to the highest stage of World Cup qualifying they've ever reached. I'm inclined to vote for Peter Byers - Wikipedia since he played at the highest level out of them, spending a few seasons in MLS with Montreal. 

They're also one of the West Indies countries (I've also just discovered what the West Indies are). Viv Richards - Wikipedia is someone who did some cricket and seemed quite good at it, so it's an easy win for him. 

Keep up the good work. People may get the idea of what is happening here. 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

On 17/07/2021 at 11:20, Bully Wee Villa said:

Yes it is. Bill Werbeniuk pushed his body much further than any cyclist or tennis player ever did. A proper sportsman.

Drunk snooker is a sport.

Sober snooker is not.

Bill had the body or a cyclist. And a tennis player. And a snooker player. And a rugby team.

Edited July 18, 2021 by Melanius Mullarkey

[DiegoDiego]

I get that we're going alphabetically here, but I thought I'd respond to this so it ends up in my participated threads list.

Goran Pandev for North Macedonia (although you could make a claim for Darko Pandev).
The other sport would be basketball but I can't think of any Macedonian basketballers.
F1 v Football is an interesting one- how do you compare Fangio to Maradona or Senna to Pele?

Kirill Lazarov was easily a better handball player than Pandev was a footballer.

[oneteaminglasgow]

Are we going to bother with the pretence of considering other sports for Argentina, or will we just jump straight to whether we’re going with Messi or Maradona?

If we are going to look at other sports, I believe there’s some pretty good Argentine basketball players, some tennis players (Del Potro, Vilas and Nalbandian) and Juan Manuel Fangio, who was apparently quite good at F1 in the 50’s.