I was trying to stay away from this thread but what de hell
Ah don't know who it was who say
"football is like a piano. On a team you need three men who know how to play it and 8 men to carry the damn thing."
I remember mih father complaining how much of a labourer Mazinho was in 94 and wondering if he came from Brazil village, with he lack of skills.
In hindsight, though I never see him play outside of the World Cup, I have to say that labourer <> shittong/shit hound. It have plenty men who less talented than the others who around them on a team. Usually, in the case of teams with big player pools, they there for a reason, and it have nothing to do with blackmailing the coach.
The more you have men like Ronaldinho, Zidane, Maradona, Latapy etc in a side who have licence to kill and never hear bout tackle unless it involve fishing, the more you need labourers to bring balance to the side. Granted, it have men like Deschamps and Dunga who does make being a hard man look attractive, but at the end of the day, nobody don't ask d-mids and defenders (because is mostly those we talking about if we honest with we self) to be pretty.
As far as I concern, the only positions where it REAL easy to identify a man as a shittong is striker - NB I didn't say forward. I said STRIKER. That is why, unfortunately, in all objectivity I can't put Crouch in that category. While he is mediocre as far as his capacity as a goalscorer goes, he uses his height to good advantage in the service of his teammates. I suppose you could call him a poor man's Jan Koller.
However, men like Kuranyi and Asamoah for me fall into that category easy easy wheenever they have on a german national team shirt, at least.
As far as Guivarch goes, at the time France was suffering from a lack of real centre forwards (the running joke was that there were more strikers in the street than on the field) - he only made his first appearance for them a couple months before the world cup (on the back of club form i presume), and only ever scored one goal for his country (ina pre-wc friendly) and never ever represented them afterwards.
Pauleta is a boss striker. He even hit a hattrick in one world cup match against Poland (2002). His main problem was being part of a Portuguese side that didn't hit its prime until he was a bit past his, and which just didn't have the personnel to service him the way he needed to be while he was still in good nick.
Problem is, you can't judge a player on one tournament. Some fellas are suffering from confidence problems going into a tourney and it shows. Others just can't handle the nerves (proof that playing for your country and your club is not the same thing)
ps. Wiltord might be a ugly player (in every sense of the word lol) but he was a decent baller. You don't play for the best club in France, one of the best in England and the post 1998 French national team (guess how many caps) by accident.
