Vincent Duluc’s all-time Champions League XI includes George Best, Johan Cruyff, Lionel Messi but not Cristiano Ronaldo or Frenchmen | OneFootball

According to L'Équipe, Vincent Duluc has named his ideal European Cup and Champions League XI, a task spanning more than seven decades and demanding tough choices across eras.

George Best, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi make the cut. Cristiano Ronaldo does not, and no French players feature.

The Champions League arrived in 1992, gradually increasing the number of matches and broadening representation for leading nations. It accounts for only half of the European Cup’s history, which was launched by L'Équipe’s football desk in 1955.

Duluc writes that his XI seeks balance between those two periods, and between his personal memories and his decades at the paper. It reflects both the years of waiting for the Eurovision theme and the great nights in the continent’s finest stadiums.

The exercise, he adds, was above all about separating the biggest stars of each generation to form one side.

Source: L'Équipe

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