u/AlienHeadwars

I know I’m going to get absolutely cooked for this by the YouTube compilations crowd, but we need to have a serious conversation about legacy versus aesthetics. There's way more to actual footballing talent than rainbow-flicking over farmers in Ligue 1. A fancy trick bag doesn't make you a footballing god if you spend half of every season injured.

The absolute biggest stain on his legacy is that his Brazil career is genuinely awful. His crowning international accomplishment is a solitary Copa América loser's medal in 2021 (friendly reminder: Brazil actually won the tournament in 2019 when he was injured). This entire Brazilian generation has been a historic underachievement, and Neymar’s showponying stat-padding as the main man is a massive factor in why they never played winning tournament football. Fittingly, he just capped it all off with a pathetic 2026 World Cup Round of 16 exit where Ancelotti threw him on to do absolutely nothing but score a charity penalty consolation goal. Everyone crowned him the heir to Ronaldinho, but let's be real: he’s as much the successor to Ronaldinho as Ariel Ortega was to Maradona.

Here is the definitive Top 20 of this generation. Read it and weep.

1. Lionel Messi & 2. Cristiano Ronaldo The aliens. Skipping them.

3. Luis Suárez The ultimate apex predator. While Neymar played football like it was a Nike commercial, Suárez played every single match like someone was holding his family hostage. He is the only mortal on earth to beat prime Messi and prime Cristiano Ronaldo for the European Golden Shoe - and he did it twice. His 13/14 season at Liverpool (31 goals, 12 assists in 33 games with ZERO penalties) while dragging a squad featuring Aly Cissokho and Jon Flanagan is the greatest individual carry-job in Premier League history. He absolutely would have won the league entirely by himself if Stevie G wasn't so slippery or if Suárez wore a muzzle.

Then he went to Barcelona, joined Neymar’s team, and casually outscored him by a mile (dropping 40 league goals and 16 assists in 15/16). Oh, and unlike Neymar, Suárez actually won a Copa América for his country as the main man (2011) and took home Player of the Tournament. Pure, ruthless, match-winning output.

4. Gareth Bale During their overlapping time in La Liga, Bale actually had a higher non-penalty goals and assists per 90 minutes (G+A-PK/90) than Neymar, and he did it while carrying far more tactical and defensive responsibilities. Add in his five UCLs, his overhead kicks in finals, and dragging Wales to a Euro semi, and Bale clears him easily. Neymar was a luxury; Bale was a sniper.

5. Manuel Neuer He didn't just win a World Cup and two Trebles; he literally broke the geometry of the sport by inventing modern sweeping.

6. Andrés Iniesta & 7. Xavi: The metronomes of the greatest club (Pep's Barça) and international (Spain 08-12) dynasties in football history. While Neymar was busy trying to humiliate full-backs on the halfway line for Instagram reels, these two were suffocating the sport's greatest teams with five-yard passes. Iniesta is the only player in history named Man of the Match in a World Cup Final, a Euro Final, and a Champions League Final, literally winning the 2010 World Cup in the 116th minute. Xavi just took the ball, hid it from your team for 90 minutes, and casually walked away with four Champions Leagues, two Euros, and a World Cup.

8. Luka Modrić Won a Ballon d'Or in the middle of the Messi/Ronaldo monopoly, won six Champions Leagues, and dragged a country of four million people to a World Cup Final.

9. Kylian Mbappé A World Cup winner as a teenager who scored a hat-trick in another final. He took the baton from Neymar at PSG and completely left him in the dust.

10. Harry Kane An absolute machine. Elite playmaker and elite finisher who put up actual historic numbers in the hardest league in the world, not against Troyes and Dijon. He is the second-highest scorer in Premier League history (213 goals) and literally led the league in BOTH goals and assists in the exact same season (20/21). Doing that while carrying a dysfunctional Spurs side is infinitely more impressive than scoring back-post tap-ins for a state-funded PSG superteam.

11. Sergio Ramos The ultimate warlord. Four UCLs, three international trophies, and more clutch DNA in his right pinky than Neymar showed in his entire 30s.

12. Robert Lewandowski Won a Sextuple and battered Gerd Müller's untouchable Bundesliga record of 40 goals in a season. Pure mechanical consistency.

13. Kevin De Bruyne Six Premier League titles and a Treble. The architect of the hardest league in the world and actively broke deep blocks in ways Neymar couldn't against physical English teams.

14. Wayne Rooney The selfless engine. Sacrificed his own statistical ceiling to accommodate Ronaldo, yet still dominated the PL for a decade and became United's all-time top scorer.

15. Mo Salah Put up actual video game numbers in the Premier League. When you adjust for league difficulty, Salah’s output and consistency absolutely dwarf Neymar’s time in France. The actual king of the wing this generation.

16. Erling Haaland A generational goal-scoring freak who literally just knocked Neymar out of the World Cup and into international retirement.

17. Toni Kroos The German metronome. You don't win six Champions Leagues and a World Cup by accident. He controlled the tempo of European football for a decade with a 95% pass completion rate in his sleep.

18. Virgil van Dijk The ultimate defensive catalyst. He was the final, missing puzzle piece that turned Klopp's Liverpool into a Champions League and Premier League-winning juggernaut. Aura defending at its absolute peak.

19. Thomas Müller The Raumdeuter. Aesthetically ugly? Yes. But he orchestrated the 7-1 and the 8-2, won two Trebles, and is a World Cup legend.

20. Ousmane Dembélé This one is just the cherry on top. PSG literally replaced Neymar with Dembélé, and what happened? Dembélé immediately helped PSG win back-to-back Champions League titles in 2025 and 2026. Turns out, winning in Europe requires an attacker willing to put the team first, more than just a brand asset.

Honestly, I got bored after 20. I'm not even sure Neymar is 21st. You still have Casemiro, David De Gea, Benzema, N'Golo Kanté, etc., waiting in the wings.

Let me know which part of this list hurt your feelings the most.

Hello, I made a second account to promote a free football card game I made.

I've only made a couple of posts referencing the game, most of the time I'm just replying to posts talking about football.

After a day or so of 0 interactions with any of my posts/replies I started getting suspicious and noticed my posts don't show up in search at all. They also have exceptionally low view counts.

Doing some research it sounds as though this is quite common for new accounts, but the suggestions seem to be if you act normal (I've just been browsing/replying for days now) it should become visible after a week ... That's not happened, I've been invisible for over 10 days now. I'm also not unsure why talking to myself convinces anyone I'm not a spam bot.

Does anyone have any advice?

Hi r/WebGames! I'm a solo dev and I've been working on Dugouts & Dragons for over a year now. It's a "Fantasy Football" game in the literal sense - deckbuilding tactics meets D20 dice rolls with dragons and wizards playing football.

I've just pushed several updates recently which add add features like:

• Assistant Manager: Toggle Auto-Sim to watch the AI play while you learn the mechanics.
• Boss Teams: Face off against the "66 Lions" and Roman Gods in the new endgame.
• Smart Sorting: The cards you need will be most accessible during a match.
• Improved difficulty: I've ironed out some lulls in the leagues where it could get too easy, or spikes where it would get too difficult. It should be a fun challenge throughout.

It’s free, mobile-friendly, and I’m really looking for feedback on the new difficulty spikes in the Welsh and English leagues!

Play here: https://alienheadwars.itch.io/dugouts-and-dragons