The Manchester United No. 7 shirt has a certain mythical quality. Wearing the shirt is by no means a guarantee of success—witness Antonio Valencia and Michael Owen as Angel Di Maria's numerical predecessors.
However, it is not just that United have had a lot of good No. 7s, although they have, it is that some of the club's most iconographic, and iconoclastic, players have worn that number.
Its imagery is imbued with the spirit of George Best and of Eric Cantona, with the brilliance of Cristiano Ronaldo and the determination of Bryan Robson. For those who would deny the cult of numbers it is meaningless, but to millions of fans it represents something special.
Closest to a place on the list of those who missed out is Billy Meredith, a No. 7 from the early 20th century who helped United win two league titles and an FA Cup. Never having seen even footage of him playing makes ranking him a difficult job, but he was a superstar of the day.
In truth, ranking the shirt's occupants is an impossible task. They played in different eras—how would Best have fared if he had access to the kind of training regimen that Ronaldo benefited from? They also played in different positions. There are wingers, midfielders and centre-forwards on the list, and those who sort of played in all of those positions at once, such was their brilliance.
The top four here could be rearranged into any order with perfectly reasonable justification. There will be those who argue that my personal biases have affected the ordering, and they are right, but this is about more than just rational football analysis. It is about iconography. It is about magic.
It is about the No. 7 shirt at Manchester United.
//from Bleacher Report http://ift.tt/1FBhCXG
via IFTTT October 22, 2014
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