So, unless you have been under a rock, or not watched ESPN for the last week or so, you know that the NBA’s greatest player of all time, turned 50 today. When you think about Michael Jordan, you obvioulsy think about him being the greatest basketball player of all times, first. But then if you start to think about it further, you may think that he is the greatest athlete of all time. Not necessarily the most fit athlete of all time, or the most athletically gifted, but the greatest athlete of all time.

One, because of how well he played the game, right?. He won everything one can win. He re-wrote the record books. But he also, was the most marketed athlete ever. 10 years after the retired, Jordan literally makes AT LEAST $80 million dollars a year based on endorsements and lending his name to an entire brand of shoes. He was and still is a global icon. His name is going to live on forever and he is synonmous with the game. Even to the point where there was some rumblings of changing the NBA logo to be him.

What the hell does this have to do with soccer? Well, obviously I am a basketball guy, who is in the soccer world after falling in love with it, and I tend to get a lot of people who ask me random questions about soccer that sometimes I dont know the answer to. I was watching all of this stuff about Mike this weekend and when I was driving today, I thought to myself… if the question of who is the Michael Jordan of soccer was asked, who would it be?

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* Here are the names that I came up with. Quick point on why some of these guys are in here: When asking the question of them being the “Michael Jordan of soccer” … its more than just about playing the game, right?

Who is the guy just as talented away from the pitch as they are on it. Who is a global star? All of these guys have won a ton of trophies and been named to “best of….” lists, right? How will the young guys do? How will the older guys do other than Pelé….

You can click on three different guys too. So we can get a nice feel of who gets the most first place votes, but also second place, and third place votes as well…

If you want to go ahead and throw some comments in there, feel free, I would be interested in seeing what everyone thinks! or if you think we missed someone who deserves to be on the list….