El Gunner's Top 20 Most Impressive Footballers of his lifetime

El Gunner wrote:

BarcaLearning wrote:Never watched Juve much despite knowing them consistently making runs in the CL n dominating Serie A for long periods during that later 90s to mid 00s ish era? Despite Del Piero being great, he was mostly just a sub for Italy? A big no.9 + Totti were always preferred iirc. There were some players like that, real entertaining skillful flair players but prolly werent as impactful n consistent overall perhaps?

don't know about in the 90s, but yea from what i can remember during the mid 00s he was simply excess to requirements for Italy. Italy played a certain physical and organised system which he just didn't fit into... old school 4-4-2, with every single player except maybe for the guy up top needing to be hardworking runners. Totti played in his position, and i think he was preferred because he was more physical and more efficient than Del Piero - while having the ability of giving more or less the same attacking output.

Del Piero was more the flair type of 10/supporting striker willing to take chances and wanting to find pockets of spaces in the final third to make something happen. He would have been perfect for Spain during that time, for instance, as he could have done that job for Morientes, and then maybe for Villa and Torres up until 2008 before the era of false 9s and 4-3-3 offshoots.