While Ronaldo and Messi dominated the headlines, these five players were quietly doing things that deserved way more recognition.
The 2000s were one of the richest decades in soccer history. Ronaldinho was dazzling the world at Barcelona. Thierry Henry was dismantling defenses in the Premier League. A young Cristiano Ronaldo was emerging at Manchester United while Lionel Messi was just beginning to show the world what he was capable of. The era had no shortage of superstars.
But for every player who graced the covers of magazines and dominated the conversation, there were others working quietly in the background, players whose contributions were enormous but whose names rarely came up when people argued about the best of their generation. These are the players who deserved far more credit than they ever received.
Here are the five most underrated soccer players of the 2000s.
5. Simao Sabrosa – Portugal and Barcelona
during the EURO match between Germany v Portugal on June 19, 2008
Ask any casual soccer fan to name the best Portuguese players of the 2000s and you will hear Figo, Ronaldo, and Deco. You will almost never hear Simao Sabrosa, which is a genuine injustice.
The left winger was one of the most technically gifted players of his generation. Quick, direct, and blessed with an exceptional left foot, Simao was a constant menace for defenders throughout his career at Barcelona and later Atletico Madrid. He was a key member of the Portugal squad that reached the final of Euro 2004 on home soil and the semi finals of the 2006 World Cup, yet he was perpetually overshadowed by the bigger names around him.
Part of the problem was the company he kept. Playing in the same national team as Figo, Deco, and a young Ronaldo meant that Simao’s contributions were routinely overlooked. He was the player opposition coaches worried about in training but fans forgot about by Monday morning. A career that deserved three times the recognition it received.
4. Tugay Kerimoglu – Blackburn Rovers
Turkish soccer has produced some fine players over the years, but few were as quietly excellent as Tugay Kerimoglu during his time at Blackburn Rovers in the early and mid 2000s. The central midfielder arrived in England with little fanfare and proceeded to spend nearly a decade being one of the most elegant and intelligent players in the Premier League.
Tugay was not fast. He was not particularly physical. He did not score many goals. What he did instead was control games with a passing range and positional intelligence that most of his contemporaries in England simply could not match. He read the game beautifully, recycled possession with remarkable efficiency, and made Blackburn tick in a way that went almost completely unnoticed by the wider soccer world.
He played his best soccer in a mid table club in the north of England rather than at a Champions League giant, and that alone probably cost him the recognition he deserved. In a different jersey at a different club, Tugay would have been celebrated as one of the finest midfielders of his era.
3. Didier Drogba – Before Everyone Noticed
This one requires a small caveat. By the late 2000s, Didier Drogba was universally recognized as one of the most complete strikers in the world. His performances in big games for Chelsea became the stuff of legend, and his reputation was fully established before the decade was out.
But in the early part of the 2000s, during his time at Guingamp and Marseille in France, Drogba was doing things that almost nobody outside of Ligue 1 was paying attention to. He was physical, relentless, and devastatingly effective, a completely different type of center forward to anything European soccer had seen in years. His season at Marseille in 2003 to 2004, where he was named the best player in France, should have made him a household name immediately.
Instead, it took a move to Chelsea and a couple of Champions League nights to make the world finally pay attention to what had been there all along. The early Drogba years are among the most underappreciated chapters in 2000s soccer.
2. Marcos Senna – Spain and Villarreal
When Spain won Euro 2008, launching the most dominant era any international team had experienced in modern soccer history, the players who received the most credit were David Villa, Fernando Torres, Xavi, and Iniesta. All of them deserved it.
But the engine room of that Spanish team, the player who allowed Xavi and Iniesta to do what they did, was a Brazilian born defensive midfielder named Marcos Senna. Playing for Villarreal rather than one of the glamour clubs, Senna was the perfect destroyer : disciplined, intelligent, and utterly selfless in his role. He broke up opposition attacks before they could develop and gave the ball simply and quickly to the players who could create.
He was named in the team of the tournament at Euro 2008 and still most casual fans could not have told you his name. That anonymity was both the mark of a truly selfless player and one of the great injustices of the decade. Spain could not have played the way they played without him.
1. Roque Santa Cruz – Paraguay and Blackburn Rovers
Of all the players on this list, Roque Santa Cruz is perhaps the one whose career arc is most quietly devastating. The Paraguayan striker arrived at Blackburn Rovers in 2007 after years of injury problems at Bayern Munich had robbed him of what should have been his peak years, and immediately showed the Premier League exactly what it had been missing.
In his one fully fit season at Blackburn, Santa Cruz was sensational. Tall, elegant, technically superb, and clinical in front of goal, he combined physical presence with a touch and movement that reminded you of the very best strikers in the world. He scored 23 goals across all competitions that season and earned a big money move to Manchester City.
And then the injuries came back. And they never really left. A player who had the tools to be genuinely world class spent the majority of his career fighting his own body, producing flashes of brilliance between long spells on the treatment table. His 2007 to 2008 season at Blackburn remains one of the great what if performances of the entire decade.
He had everything. Soccer just never gave him the health to show it consistently enough.
Honorable Mentions
The 2000s were full of players who deserved more shine than they got. Honorable mentions go to Robbie Keane of Ireland and LA Galaxy, a relentlessly effective striker who spent his career being appreciated only by those who watched him closely, Salif Diao of Senegal whose 2002 World Cup run was extraordinary, and Niko Kovac of Croatia, a tireless midfielder who held together one of the most talented national teams of the era.
The greatest players are not always the ones on the posters. Sometimes they are the ones making everything possible from the shadows.
Who do you think was the most underrated player of the 2000s? Let us know in the comments.