a few more days and i might expect someone to mention palermo in this thread
seriously guys, there are lots of teams that really shouldn't be here....
we can't establish any sort of ranking based on the quality of the football obviously... first, because none of us saw some of theese teams playing enough matches to properly rate them.... (i just saw 2 '70s bayern matches... i never saw il grande torino playing and i watched just some highlights of '50s real madrid)...
besides even if we would actually know each of theese teams enough to compare their football, we would discover it's pretty much impossible to do it.
let's take il grande torino, the '30s juve or the '50s real madrid, for example. they were some of the greatests teams in the history of the game, as they completely ruled the european scenario for 5 years (il grande torino was the world's best team from 1943 till the tragedy of superga; that glorious juventus was on top from 1930 to 1935, real madrid was on top from 1955 to 1960). theese teams domination was way longer than modern teams domination (when u think that the usual living cycle of a team is 3 years nowadays..) and the concept of "domination" itself had quite a different meaning. we're not talking about teams like today's man utd or barcelona, which had some great seasons with league wins a champions league and some CL finals \semi finals.
that torino, that juve and that real madrid completely dominated each and every competition they joined for 5 years... they did what barcelona did this season.... but they did it for 5 years in a row (just to put things in perspective).
yet i'm quite confident each of theese glorious teams would be completely dismantled by this barcelona. but that's pretty obvious as it was a long time ago... football was different, the players were different, the game as it was conceived was different.... herrera, the dutch revolution and sacchi were yet to come....
so once esablished we can't compare the quality of the football played by teams in different eras, we can come to the conclusion that the only thing we can base our reasoning on is the impact theese teams had on their own "era".
and this logic (wich is the only one we can apply to teams which played in different periods) will bring us to a much shorter list.
the 1930/1935 juventus team
the 1944/1949 torino team
the 1955/1960 real madrid team
the 1963/1967 inter team
the 1970/1973 ajax team
the 1974/1977 bayern munich team
the 1987/1991 milan team.
and that's it. no eusebio's benfica, no crujff's barcelona, no red star belgrade, no '60s man utd.... just theese 7 teams.
eusebio's benfica was a great attacking team.... but they didn't bring something new to football and their european domination lasted for about 2 years. as a matter of fact, the main reason why that team became glorious is because they beated puskas's real madrid in the CL final.... awesome achievement, but i'm afraid that's not enough to give em a place among the greatests football teams of all times.
also crujff's barcelona was a nice team (the team was great, the coach was a "more show than go" kinda guy.... a bit like mourinho.... maybe slightly better than mou).... they won a lot in spain.... but they didn't "change the game" and they didn't dominate the european scenario at all..... as a matter of fact they were repeatedly humiliated in europe, by both sacchi's and capello's milan. and since i didn't put capello's milan in that list, i'm definitely not gonna put crujff's barcelona.
sure we might even add that barcelona team, aswell as we could add eusebio's benfica or charlton's man utd...... but then, even before those teams, we should add to that list the late '70s paisley's liverpool, the early 80s trapattoni's juventus, capello's milan (in that list there is just the 1987/1991 milan, wich was sacchi's milan)....
and mentioning also all theese teams would be unfair to those 7 history-makers teams i mentioned earlier. Coz those 7 teams had a much bigger impact on the game than any other team in the history of the game.
those 7 teams changed football as we knew it, their coaches modified the whole core concept of the game. those teams are cornerstones people normally use to identify the different eras in football. and that's more than we can say about every other team mentioned in this thread.
puskas's real madrid was the "patentee" of the spanish football school. the orange revolution in the '70s brought in the concept of "movement without the ball".
Herrera invented the zone pressing, pretty much revolutionized the whole concept of defending and changed for ever the players training methods.
Sacchi brought football to its highests levels. his impact on modern football is something so deep that u can't really find any tactical aspect of the game he didn't change for ever. he also built a team wich was so unbelievably close to perfection that no one, no other coach in the last 20 years was able to even get close to him and his milan.
the mid 90s lippi's juventus, the early 2000s ancelotti's milan, and last man utd team (wich just ended a glorious cycle and its now trying to start a new one), they were all great teams, but as i said for the other teams some of u guys mentioned, it would be unfair to pretend theese teams were on the same level of those 7 historic teams.
and please, let's not mention this current barcelona team! this was an awesome season for barca. they're a great team any football fan would love to watch playing, and they certainly deserve the success they got..... but come on, this is just the 1st season of barcelona's new cycle.... we can't already compare this barca to the 2006/2008 man utd team (wich proved to be sucessful all along its 3 years cycle), let alone comparing it to the greatests teams in history..... that's just ridiculous.
that team was same as barca this days 
