Players like Ronaldo, Messi and Neymar aren’t for sure, because defending should also be in the conversation. The Camavinga memes had me thinking, is there a player who was/is actually really good at everything, or at least most things inside the pitch?

Gullit, Yaya Toure, Matthaus and in general box2box players could do anything from defending to scoring. Pogba when he was world class is a good example. Defenders who scored regurarly like Ramos, Hierro or Koeman, even fullbacks like Marcelo or Dani Alves are exceptional on many things.

Another fun pick would be Jorge Campos, the goalkeeper who also played as an attacker sometimes.

    • norsemaniacr@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      He was a monster. But doesn’t 100% fit OP’s criteria.

      The pros:
      He played several seasons in offensive positions, before establishing himself as a world class left back. Started as striker in Brazil, but allready there got used on left back some times and it went well enough that he got on the national team. Moved to Inter Milan where Roy Hodgson used him (somewhat succesfully despite the team having a bad season) as winger. But since his position on the national team where left back, and he didn’t have any (immideate) chance to get minutes on the offensive positions he asked the club owner to force the manager to use him as left back. Instead they sold him to Real Madrid with them promising him to use him on left back position. He was as good offensive (if not better) as he was defensive, and he could quite easily be put on any position on the field, but one, which brings os to…

      The cons:
      He would be a bad center back alone for the fact that he is only 1.68m tall, so he would loose all the headers. He physique was also more centered around speed and agility (and stamina) so opposite of what you want in a centerback. The same cons would limit him as striker, in which he would have to be in a formation with more strenght/height/header types to succed/compliment.