Overshadowed By Awesome / Association Football

In Association Football, many exceptional players and clubs overshadowed other great contemporaries.

---

Clubs

• Ask someone to name a Scottish football team. They'll come up with either Celtic or Rangers (and probably Aberdeen), and for good reason; together they have won over one hundred league titles (55 for Rangers, 53 for Celtic), with the last time another team winning the title being Aberdeen in 1985.
• Portugal has Porto, Benfica... and Sporting.
• The Netherlands has its triumvirate in Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord — while there are other respectable teams in the country like AZ Alkmaar, Twente and Utrecht, those aforementioned three teams are by far the most dominant forces domestically, and in the case of Ajax, have been massively influential in the way football is played as a whole.
• Belgium has Anderlecht and Club Brugge, but savvier people might point to Standard Liège, Gent and Genk as well.
• Greece has Olympiacos and Panathinaikos, though AEK Athens and PAOK Thessaloniki might get a shout-out as well.
• Serbia is a similar case to Scotland: the two teams most people would instantly name from there are capital city Belgrade's arch-rivals Red Star/Crvena Zvezda and Partizan. Both clubs not only have always played in the top level of Yugoslav - and later on Serbian - football, but since the dissolution of Yugoslavia they have won all but one league title (that one being won by another Belgrade-based football club, the now inactive FK Obilić, in 1995 - while being bankrolled by infamous war criminal Željko "Arkan" Ražnatović no less).
• Before the 2010s, a similar case to Serbia was Bulgaria, where the only two teams most people would instantly name were also capital city teams—CSKA Sofia and Levski Sofia. Then in 2011, a little-known side named Ludogorets Razgrad was promoted to the top flight for the first time... and immediately won the title. And the next one. And the one after that. And every other title through 2022–23.
• Turkey has its Istanbul-based big three — Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe and Beşiktaş. Although Trabzonspor may sometimes pull an upset as shown most recently in 2022, those big three are by far the most successful clubs in the country.
• Italy has Juventus, Inter Milan and AC Milan — who have historically won the majority of Serie A titles; before Napoli's triumph in 2023, the last time none of these three teams won the league was in 2001, when AS Roma were crowned champions. Roma themselves are often thought as the biggest victims of the trope in Italy, having finished in second place more than any other team in Serie A; however, the most heartbreaking example was in the 2017/18 season, where Maurizio Sarri's Napoli finished as runners-up with 91 points to Juventus' 95, setting the league's points record for a runner-up in the process.
• Before 2018, Hamburger SV were the only founding member of the Bundesliga who had never been relegated. During that period, though, they were perennially overshadowed by Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund (plus the likes of Schalke, Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Mönchengladbach, and VfL Wolfsburg).
  • Bayern itself overshadows the rest of Germany ever since Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Müller put the team on the map in the 1960s: the team has won the Bundesliga 30 times (more than 20 over the runners-up Nürnberg and Borussia Dortmund!) and hasn't had a drought longer than three years since the 80s.
• Try to explain to any fan of English football that no, the Big Four of the English Premier League aren't the only ones that are going for the Premiership title and that the other sixteen teams are also trying to earn it and not at all wanting to be treated as an entire league of Washington Generals-type doormats. Sadly the English media hyperfocused on Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool and the lack of any revenue controls assure this situation will continue for the near future.
  • More recently, Liverpool fell by the wayside which, combined with the ascendance of Manchester City and to a lesser extent Tottenham Hotspur and possibly Everton, looked to shake things up a bit; the Manchester clubs won the 2012 & 13 seasons at a canter (City and United respectively) and Tottenham have caused Arsenal and Chelsea major worries in both, with Liverpool not even close to qualifying for the Champions League. But Liverpool surged back after Jürgen Klopp took over as manager, losing out to City for the league title by a single point (racking up the 4th highest points total of all time in the process), and winning the Champions League in 2019, and then waltzing to the 2020 league crown, before a disastrous injury-hit 2021 season, then losing the league to City by a single point, again, in 2022, while scooping up the FA Cup and League Cup and making the Champions League final.
    • In general, Liverpool under Jürgen Klopp have suffered this in comparison to Pep Guardiola's Manchester City. In three of the past four seasons, they've registered over 90 points (2019 - 97, 2020 - 99, 2022 - 92), including two of the top four points tallies in the entire history of English football. In any other era, they wouldn't just be scooping up titles, they'd be dominating the league. Klopp has won literally every single trophy available to him as Liverpool manager, the first manager in English football to achieve the so-called 'grand slam' since Sir Alex Ferguson. Unfortunately, there's City, who have won 4 of the last 5 titles. Twice, City have been quite literally one point ahead of them (the 2022 title race came down not just to the last day, but the last ten minutes), and they reached the 100-point mark in 2018. They're acknowledged as arguably the best two teams on the planet, their title races so tight that most pundits agreed that neither side deserved to lose (but only one could win).
    • However, before 2023, it was the other way around in Europe, much to City's chagrin, which is why Guardiola hadn't managed the 'grand slam' - more than once, they've been dumped out by Liverpool, and before 2023 they had only reached one final, in 2020 (and lost, to Chelsea). Liverpool had reached 3 in 5 years, winning one. Finally averted in 2023, when City swept the Prem, FA Cup, and Champions League.
  • Everton usually suffer this in comparison to Liverpool, their very local rivals (they're quite literally across a park). While Everton made a decent fist at the top 4 in the mid 2000s, and were considered one of the best teams in Europe in the 80s, both times they were overshadowed by a Liverpool side that respectively tended to pull off spectacular cup wins (the 'Miracle of Istanbul' Champions League final of 2005 - which, adding insult to injury, was the year Everton finally managed to temporarily turf them out of the top 4 - and the FA Cup 'Gerrard Final' in 2006), and, in the case of the 80s team, be one of the best teams that English and European football has ever seen, but couldn't properly punch their weight on the continental level due to the ban from European competitions that English clubs suffered on the wake of the Heysel disaster. As of the late 2010s/early 2020s, despite actually outspending Liverpool, Everton were left in Liverpool's wake - to the point where in 2022, Liverpool did a domestic Cup Double, came within 8 minutes of winning the League, and have reached the Champions League final. Everton, meanwhile, only narrowly avoided being relegated.
  • Subverted twice, with Blackburn Rovers winning the league in 1995, and Leicester City following suit in 2016. The aforementioned successes didn't last though, with Rovers losing Alan Shearer, Graeme Le Saux, and Henning Berg, then getting relegated soon after, and Leicester losing N'Golo Kanté, firing Claudio Ranieri, and dropping off to the relegation dogfight (though they made it back to mid-table safety by season's end).
  • It's commonly believed that the teams to have never been relegated from the Premier League re Man United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, and Tottenham (though Everton only very narrowly escaped in 2022 and 2023). However, very few people know that Brighton and Brentford, who were first promoted to the Prem in 2017 and 2021 respectively, currently had that honor as well.
• Same with Athletic Bilbao. They've never been relegated from the top of La Liga, but everyone talks about Real Madrid and FC Barcelona (oh, and also Atlético Madrid).
  • Sevilla is always overshadowed in La Liga... but managed to translate those middling national championship results into victorious campaigns in the UEFA Europa League (the second-tier continental tournament), with seven titles, five of those since 2014.
• Brazil historically had several teams that usually occupy the Brasileirão's Serie A roster slots, cup qualification echelons and championship candidacy: Rio de Janeiro's Botafogo, Flamengo, Fluminense and Vasco da Gama; São Paulo's Corinthians, Palmeiras, Santos and São Paulo (with Red Bull Bragantino only recently getting into the conversation); Belo Horizonte's Atlético Mineiro and Cruzeiro; and Porto Alegre's Inter and Grêmio. This is despite most of the Brazilian states having at least one high-profile rivalry between two or three teams, which are only talked about on a local level.
  • When people talk about clubs from São Paulo that have won the Campeonato Brasileiro, they know about Palmeiras, Corinthians, São Paulo FC, and Santos.^note the last of these actually being from the state of São Paulo instead of the city Virtually no one knows that Guarani (from the city of Campinas) won the Campeonato back in 1978, or that other teams like Bragantino (before the Red Bull buyout) and Portuguesa (the fourth big team of the city of São Paulo, despite going through hard times as of the 2010s; Santos is located in the eponymous city) have come close, being runners-up in 1991 and 1996 respectively.
• Argentina has "The Big 5". Ever since professionalism was instituted in 1931, and until 1966, the year where clubs from all around the country could compete (and not just from Capital Federal and the surrounding cities), only 5 clubs managed to win the Primera División's annual tournament: Boca Juniors, River Plate, Independiente de Avellaneda, Racing Club de Avellaneda and San Lorenzo de Almagro. Therefore, and even though at several points of Argentina's football history they were indeed overshadowed by other teams such as Estudiantes de La Plata and Vélez Sársfield whether it comes to championships or popularity, "the Big 5" were always there.
  • Enforced with the Buenos Aires domination. All mentioned teams come from the big city itself (Boca, River, San Lorenzo, Vélez) or its suburbia (Racing, Independiente, even Estudiantes). Outside of the area, only Rosario's Newell's Old Boys and Rosario Central and, more recently Santa Fe's Colón and Entre Ríos's Patronato have managed to snatch at least one title (and a case can be made for Córdoba's Talleres, who won the 1999 edition of the Conmebol Cup, a third-level continental competition, back then behind the Libertadores and the Supercopa). Despite the country having around 4000 active clubs, 99% of them during the aforementioned early days of professionalism didn't had any chance of playing in the higher levels. Newell's, Central and Colón could only get a chance after becoming officially affiliated to AFA, and Patronato won the Copa Argentina the same year it was relegated from the Primera División.
  • Despite being a quite popular club and a mainstay of Primera División ever since its beginnings (only being relegated and participating in Primera B and its eventual Spiritual Successor Primera B Nacional for a grand total of 10 seasons as of 2023), La Plata's Gimnasia y Esgrima has been constantly overshadowed by their rivals, Estudiantes, who not only won the Primera División tournament eight times as of 2023, but also achieved success at continental (4x Copa Libertadores, 1x Copa Interamericana) and intercontinental (1x the now defunct Intercontinental Cup against none other than England's Manchester United) levels. Gimnasia, meanwhile, is the Primera División's Butt-Monkey for its complete lack of success, their only titles being earned during the amateur days and a Milestone Celebration cup (Copa Centenario 1992). Safe to say, many clubs in the lower leagues have a higher amount of championships earned on their own than Gimnasia.

• In general, the vast majority of other teams and leagues all around the world are overshadowed by the "Big Five" European Leagues; the English Premier League, the French Ligue 1, La Liga of Spain, Serie A of Italy, and the German Bundesliga. Unless a country has a deeply rooted league tradition of its own, such as Brazil or Argentina, they're likely to be drastically overshadowed - and odds are good that you'll still see more Liverpool/Manchester United/PSG/Real Madrid/Barcelona shirts than the local kit. They're the richest and most powerful leagues in the world and usually full of the best players thanks to the magnetism of prestige and money (but mainly money) - enough that they can often challenge multinational associations, with the African Football Federation, CAF, finally making plans in 2017 to permanently move the biennial African Cup of Nations to June and July to accommodate the European season (and avoid the biennial squabble with the European clubs over releasing players). While these leagues were already important and notorious enough, prior to the Bosman ruling, they were on more or less the same playing field as other leagues who managed to get clubs in the top tiers such as the Scottish League and Yugoslavia. However, after the introduction of said law, many of the big clubs in the big leagues started snatching players from everywhere, and the arrival of external capitals made things even harder for leagues outside of the Top-5.

Players

• Edson Arantes do Nascimento (Pelé) caused his club, Santos FC, to struggle for a while in his absence.
  • Also from Brazil, Heleno de Freitas was considered the first idol of Botafogo, even though he didn't win a title there. Seven years later emerged on the team a striker with crooked legs nicknamed Garrincha... (Garrincha himself was a victim of this trope, as his Botafogo would be the greatest team in the country if not for Pelé's Santos, even though they made one of the greatest attacking duos the Brazilian national team has ever seen).
• In the States, Kristine Lilly. A member of the U.S. women's national team (USWNT) for 23 years (1987-2010), making her first appearance when she was 16. More international appearances than any other player of either sex (352—only fellow USWNT members Carli Lloyd and Christie Pearce (Rampone), plus Canada's Christine Sinclair, have gotten to 300, and only one man has even reached 200). Played in nearly 80 percent of the games the USWNT had ever played by the time she finally retired (it was over 85 percent before her 2007 pregnancy). Retired as number 2 on the all-time list for international goals by a player of either sex. The kind of stats you'd expect to see from someone who's THE icon of the sport in a country where until recently, the women's game (or at least the national team) was bigger than the men's game, right? Well... not quite. She had a few more celebrated teammates...
  • For much of her career, Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers took most of the spotlight. When Pelé released his list of the top 125 living players in 2004 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of FIFA, they were the only two women on it. Oh, and remember seeing that Lilly was second on the all-time goals list? Guess who was first—Hamm.
  • After Akers and then Hamm retired, then there was Abby Wambach, who went on to annihilate Hamm's all-time goals record.
  • By the time Lilly retired, the next face of American women's soccer, Alex Morgan, had made her international debut.
  • Heck, even the goalkeepers overshadowed her. For one, Hope Solo. Free-spirited, often outspoken, became enough of a celebrity to appear on Dancing with the Stars.
  • The 2015 and 2019 World Cups didn't make things better for Lilly, as it propelled a lot of new names into the spotlight, such as Carli Lloyd, Sydney Leroux, Megan Rapinoe, Julie Ertz, Sam Mewis, and Rose Lavelle.
• Name an active world-class goalkeeper that's not named Manuel Neuer, David de Gea, Hugo Lloris, Gianluigi Buffon, Alisson, Thibaut Courtois, Gianluigi Donnarumma or Jan Oblak.
  • A little while back, that challenge would've been "name a goalkeeper not named Iker Casillas, Petr Čech, Edwin van der Sar, or Gianluigi Buffon."
  • Among those active keepers named above, Oblak is experiencing a different form of this. Since his national team is Slovenia, a relative minnow in European football, he's overshadowed by keepers who play for more powerful national teams. Fortunately for his reputation, he's been one of the leading lights of Atlético Madrid for the last few years.
  • There are many great goalkeepers who didn't gain too much recognition in the international stage due to their more talented and well-known countrymen starting over them.
  • Germany: Roman Weidenfeller and Marc-André ter Stegen have talent, but they're never gonna usurp Manuel Neuer's starting spot. Jens Lehmann was also stuck behind the great Oliver Kahn.
  • Spain: Víctor Valdés was frequently overlooked in favor of Iker Casillas. Even after Casillas' retirement, Valdés (and Kiko Casilla) won't be able to start as long as David de Gea's available.
  • England: Fans of Stoke City and Southampton were understandably upset during Euro 2016 when the underrated Jack Butland and Fraser Forster sat on the bench while the perennially underperforming Joe Hart (who played for City back then) was starting.
  • Italy: Italy had a surplus of strong goalkeepers in the late 90's and early noughties, such as Cristian Abbiatti, Carlo Cudicini, Ivan Pelizzoli, Francesco Antonioli, Francesco Toldo, and many others. Unfortunately, they were never gonna start for the Azzurri, all thanks to a guy named Gianluigi Buffon. Special note to Toldo who became Azzurri's first choice goalkeeper for Euro 2000 only because Buffon was injured.
  • Argentina has a curious history: Ubaldo Fillol was, for a long time, one of the country's top historical goalkeepers. At club level he was eventually overshadowed by foreign goalkeepers such as Paraguayan José Luis Félix Chilavert and Colombians Carlos Fernando Navarro Montoya and Óscar Córdoba. At national level, he was overshadowed by, among others, Sergio Goycochea, Germán Burgos, Roberto Abbondanzieri and eventual World Cup winner Emiliano "Dibu" Martínez.
• Name a Fergie-era product of the Man United Academy who's not Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, or David Beckham.
  • Name a "Busby Babe" who's not Bobby Charlton or Duncan Edwards.
  • Or a United 'keeper who played after Schmeichel left and before van der Sar arrived.^note  If you're curious: Mark Bosnich, Massimo Taibi, Fabien Barthez, Roy Carroll, Tim Howard. Aussie, French, and American fans would likely be able to correctly answer the question, respectively with Bosnich, Barthez, and Howard.
  • Or the center backs who partnered Jaap Stam in United's Treble-winning season. ^note Henning Berg and Ronny Johnsen.
• You have to feel for Sergio Busquets, who has been the "invisible man" at Barça despite being one of the best Defensive Midfielders in the world (and also the world's biggest diver as well). During the Guardiola era of FC Barcelona, he was frequently overshadowed by midfield partners Xavi and Andrés Iniesta. Oh, and some guy named Lionel Messi was on the team too.
  • Even up to the late Tens, Sergio was pretty much overshadowed in the Barça squad. While Xavi left for Qatar and Iniesta got older, Messi got two new buddies named Luis Suárez and Neymar. Poor Sergio can't catch a break.
  • Not to mention that he later followed Messi to Inter Miami.
• Name a famous Argentine player who's not Diego Maradona or Lionel Messi. Sure there was a generation gap between them where people like Gabriel Batistuta, Juan Román Riquelme, and Carlos Tévez made their claim to fame, and before Maradona there was Mario Kempes, but it takes more than the casual spectator to know that.
  • Both Maradona and Messi also overshadowed Alfredo Di Stéfano, considered the best Argentine player until the 1978 World Cup. Di Stéfano also had the dubious honor of being the only Argentina national team coach to not qualify for the World Cup on the field.^note The other editions Argentina didn't participate in, it was for refusal rather than not qualifying. Di Stéfano is still highly regarded at Real Madrid, though.
  • Daniel Passarella is one of the very few Argentina national team players who won the World Cup on two occasions (1978 and 1986), but is still overshadowed by Maradona. Plus, his coaching career and him being the president of River Plate when the team was relegated from the Primera División for the first time in 2011 also tend to overshadow his achievements.
  • Maradona's case is also true for Italy's Napoli. Plenty of players came and went, yet Napoli's fans fondly remember Maradona for being the responsible for the club's most successful era. This even extends to Diego's own teammates back in the day (some of whom, like Ciro Ferrara and Careca, were well-regarded too), and to say that to this day Maradona enjoys a godlike status in Naples wouldn't be far from the truth at all.
• Of the great AC Milan defenses of the 1990s and 2000s, almost every football fan remembers Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi, with Alessandro Nesta sometimes getting some love - ask a non-Milanista about Alessandro Costacurta, Mauro Tassotti or any of the other greats of that era and you'll get far more blank looks.^note Costacurta also suffers from a case of Never Live It Down after missing the definitory penalty shot during the Intercontinental Cup's 2007 edition that Argentina's Boca Juniors won.
  • Barcelona and Real Madrid fans feel the same way, with Lionel Messi (plus Luis Suárez and Neymar) overshadowing the likes of Johan Cruyff, Rivaldo, and Ronaldinho (whom Messi succeeded, to rub salt in the wound), and Cristiano Ronaldo (and Gareth Bale) overshadowing the likes of Alfredo Di Stéfano, David Beckham, and Zinedine Zidane. Chelsea's money-driven success in the Abramovich era overshadows the achievements of the likes of Graeme Le Saux and Gianfranco Zola, which leads to the (false) narrative that Chelsea have "no history".
• Talk about English midfielders in the 2000s, and you'll only hear about Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, and Paul Scholes.
  • Speaking of English midfielders, Michael Carrick didn't quite get the plaudits that a player of his stature deserved. Carrick's main strength was his ability to intercept the ball and make plays from deep using accurate long passes, which would have made him a bona fide star if he played in continental Europe. Unfortunately for Carrick, England never really saw the worth in his skill set, with fans preferring all-action box-to-box mids like the aforementioned Lampard, Gerrard, and Scholes. This led to Carrick having a grand total of 34 caps in a 19-year career (compared to Gerrard's 116 and Lampard's 104), despite being seen by experts as England's answer to the likes of Andrea Pirlo, Sergio Busquets, and Xabi Alonso. Even at Manchester United, where he is appreciated more by fans, teammates, and managers, he has had to share the midfield with the likes of Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Park Ji-Sung, Paul Pogba, and Nemanja Matić.
• Ask non Liverpool fans about the 2005 UEFA Champions League final. They would likely remember Steven Gerrard who was one of Liverpool's most reputable players on that time and Xabi Alonso who would have a very successful career much later at Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. While Jerzy Dudek and Jamie Carragher get some love too for their hard work on the defense, most would probably not remember who assisted Liverpool's first goal, who scored Liverpool's second goal, and who assisted it.^note In that order: John Arne Riise, Vladimir Šmicer, Dietmar Hamann.
• Though James Milner was a promising young prospect when he was still at Leeds United and was envisioned to be a great midfielder when he reached his prime years, most people nowadays remember him for his stint as "Mr. Reliable" at Manchester City and Liverpool where he worked hard off the ball to create space for his teammates and helped the defense containing counterattacks as either a holding midfielder or a makeshift fullback, being overshadowed by famous figures such as Sergio Agüero, David Silva, Yaya Touré, Mohamed Salah, and Sadio Mané.

Managers

• Thanks to Roman Abramovich's habit of frequently firing managers, the only Chelsea managers everyone knows are José Mourinho and Frank Lampard, although the latter is known more for his playing career.
• To the disdain of "true" Manchester United fans, more people know about Alex Ferguson's achievements than those of Matt Busby.
• Argentina has two main schools of thought regarding coaching: Menottism and Bilardism. Both schools take their names from the first two managers who won World Cups with Argentina's national team: César Luis Menotti (1978) and Carlos Salvador Bilardo (1986). One school (Menottism) proposes, in general lines, a focus on ethics, a visually pleasing game style that privileges ball possession, individualism, and fair play. The other school (Bilardism), meanwhile, places emphasis on sacrifice, studying the rival before every match, a strong and almost-impossible-to-pass defense, fighting every ball in every area of the field, and winning at all costs. While there were many other coaches who tried to blend these two schools taking the best of each or outright replace them, no other coach has managed to overshadow them. Time will tell if Lionel Scaloni manages to break the binary school of thought after winning the World Cup in 2022.

Other

• Nearly three-fourths of The World Cup championships as of 2022 have been won by Italy, Brazil, Germany, or Argentina, and out of the 78 countries that have made a Cup appearance, only 8 have ever won the championship. All of those 8 have been from either Europe or South America, to a point where nobody cares about any of the other continents.
  • There's a saying that goes "The World Cup is basically the European Cup plus Brazil and Argentina" (though the third South American champion, Uruguay, is seeing a resurgence). There is also the reversed form: "The Euro is the World Cup without Brazil or Argentina".
  • The team who has this worst of all, however, is the U.S. men's team — overshadowed by the international men's teams on one side and the U.S. women's team on the other.
  • This also extends to the clubs, in a phenomenon related to the leagues, explained above. The European club competitions (and, to an extent, CONMEBOL's equivalent, the Copa Libertadores) attract so many people and so much media coverage, that few people care or know about the football practiced in the other four continental zones (North/Central America, Africa, Asia and Oceania) in general. This has been enforced, to some extent, by the Intercontinental Cup only allowing teams who won UEFA's Champions League and CONMEBOL's Copa Libertadores to participate (which actually led to CONCACAF teams participating on it). This enforcement was downplayed to some extent with the implementation of the Club World Cup in 2007 (after a failed attempt in 2000), with its format actually allowing clubs from other continents to participate, but still granting European and Southamerican clubs a direct pass to the competition's semifinals.
• In the women's version, everyone is pretty much overshadowed by the USA and Germany, which have six of the nine wins so far, with one of the two present at every final before 2023 (when Germany went out in the group stage and the USWNT in the round of 16). Strangely enough, they've never played in the final.

---