Top 1000: the best players in the French championship (590-581)
Who is the best player in the history of the French championship since its creation in 1932 until 2022? Statistics, records, personal trajectories, class, draws, imprint left: so many criteria that have enabled us to establish our very subjective ranking of the thousand most outstanding players in Division 1 and Ligue 1. The creed of a soap opera that goes last exactly 100 days.
Ibrahim Ba
Le Havre (1991-1996), Bordeaux (1996-1997), Marseilles (2001)
In the 1970s, Le Havre saw a certain Ibrahima Ba Eusebio, captain of Senegal and player endowed with great versatility, pass through its ranks. Fifteen years later, it is the turn of his son, Ibrahim Ba, to wear the colors of the oldest club. With great success, since this right midfielder combining power, speed and a pronounced taste for dribbling actively helps the Normans to stay in D1 for several seasons in a row. In 1996, Ibou joined Bordeaux where, with his hair dyed platinum blond, he changed dimension, caught the eye of AC Milan and became part of the France team. All the planets are aligned to see it go even higher. But his presence in the list of six “banished from Clairefontaine”, just with the start of the 98 World Cup, cut him in his tracks.
“I still live it as an injustice,
admits the former Girondin to
Parisian-Today-in-France
twenty years following the fact.
It’s a story that changed the course of my life.”
And that of his career, which then goes from disappointment to disappointment, like an anonymous passage by OM. Not enough, however, to draw a line under his crazy rides to Jules-Deschaseaux and Parc Lescure.
Benjamin Andre
Ajaccio (2011-2014), Rennes (2014-2019), Lille (2019-)
In another life, Benjamin André might have been a cool guy alternating between surf sessions and guitar songs on a Corsican beach surrounded by his friends. But in Benji’s life, there is also football. The midfielder has already spent more than ten years in Ligue 1, where he started in the jersey…
