Given the specific style of fondness we have for footballers from the 90s, I’ve always been curious about how we will remember those whose peak has arrived in the last 15 years or so.
The otherworldly numbers put up by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo for the best part of a decade truly have no equal in terms of longevity, and there’s a big question over whether that context will make it harder for us to remember less prolific players without the ultra-competitive numbers game being thrown back in our face.
We might not think less of Pele’s contemporaries for their failure to match his goal totals, but we didn’t have the opportunity to watch the Brazilian in action every week. When Messi and Ronaldo depart, their careers will either be mythologised to death or completely devoid of any nuance, depending on the achievements of those who follow them.
They won’t be treated in the same way as the Football Italia generation, whose best bits were enjoyed and low points forgotten, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a void for the footballer-as-mythology.
In a world where two men have done everything, however, that role may be left to those who burned bright in front of a select few but never became the player they might have been.
Alex Hleb’s trophy cabinet doesn’t mark him out as anything special – a loss in a Champions League final here, an absence from a victorious matchday squad there – and as a Belarus native he never even came close to appearing at a major international tournament.
However, when it comes to talent and sheer watchability, the former Arsenal midfielder had few equals.
We can look at April 2005 as a cut-off point between old and new, that iconic photo of Rui Costa and Marco Materazzi at a pyro-strewn San Siro – you know, the one you recognise from the football Twitter starter pack – acting as a bridge between the last generation and the one we’re witnessing today.
Back then, we were in the midst of a Champions League last eight without Barcelona, Real Madrid or Manchester United – the last time such a thing has occurred.
It was also just two months before Hleb, fresh off three successive finishes in the Bundesliga top six with VfB Stuttgart, would complete a move to Arsenal.
This was before Twitter, and before we all knew everything about a player, but fans were able to piece a few things together: specifically that he wasn’t a prolific goalscorer but was good on the ball, even if his slight frame…
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