The search for the best begins

1980 Yearbook XI:
As I showed in my first post, the Yearbook XI of 1980 wasn't too bad. A good keeper (Frey), a strong central defence (Lugano & Terry) assisted with the defensive midtfielder Cambiasso. Xavi pulling the strings and Gerrard doing the rest. An offensive and creative left side with Cole & Ronaldinho and a hard working right side with Metzelder and Kuyt. Robbie Keane up front should get enough to work with. This year gave us a lot of good center backs with Jonathan Woodgate, Ledley King and Gabriel Milito not making the XI and John Arne Riise, Emre Belözoglu, Tomas Rosicky & Florent Malouda is other notable mentions, who's not selected.

The Search

But I couldn't stop wondering, what would be the absolute best year to produce a balanced team. The very best yearbook XI. So I sat down and with help from www.transfermarkt.com, I started the search in 1987 the year Lionel Messi was born same as Cesc Fabregas and Luis Suarez, not bad at all. Then 1985....Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric and Wayne Rooney, not bad either. But how could I ever find out which were better.
I began to put things in boxes, the best keeper from each year, the best right back, left back and so on and so on. At first I took the years with my favorite players like Ronaldo, Maradona, Javier Zanetti and Paolo Maldini, then Pelé, Cruyff, Beckenbauer and Platini. No year should go undiscovered and in the end I had teams from 1940-1999 - 60 teams. I've search over 1000 players to find the very best Yearbook XI's

The Best

So the whole thing could end right here with me deciding which team I think is the best and I could go back to playing FIFA or Football Manager or watching some sports in TV (oh no thats not possible atm) But because there are so many beautiful XI's among those 60, I'm not just keeping it for myself. Neither would I just put them up for show. I will match the Yearbook XI's against each other in polls in a gigantic tournament, with the result to find THE BEST YEARBOOK XI.
My aim is to get the twitter community help me decide and every retweet will help me very much.

Thanks for reading, in my next post I will tell you a little about the tournament structure.

Here's a little sneak peak of a great midfield from the Yeabook XI of 1963.

All lineups are made at www.mygreatest11.com