The Ultimate Individual World Cup Performance | SIFC

Hi everybody, welcome to Sports Illustrated Football Club, and today we are gonna talk about the ultimate individual performance in World Cup history.

We are gonna do it with the Sports Illustrated Football Club newsroom.

Dan Willis, our managing editor, hi Dan, how are you?

Hello, good, thank you, you?

Yeah, all good, all good, thank you.

And Brian, Brian Goldfarb, Brian, our VP editorial.

Brian, how are you?

Hi Ali, it's a pleasure to be here.

Ah, guys, if I ask you the best individual performance in World Cup history, I have some name in mind, but I want to hear from you .

Dan, what's the first player coming to your mind?

So, I'm a bit biased in this.

Zidane has always been my favorite player.

So I've picked his performance in the 2006 World Cup quarterfinal against Brazil.

So I picture the scene, uh, he's 34, he has a thigh injury, big pressure game against Brazil, reigning champions, and it's just a, a, a masterpiece of individual brilliance, flicks, tricks.

Pirouettes, everything, all happening, uh, the Brazil players couldn't get near him, he played the game at his pace and just absolutely controlled the, the, the whole day.

I sit for a read and Nalme on Ronaldo.

Unbelievable, but, but I think if we go to Argentina, the, the outcome of this is gonna be completely different because of course there is Lionel Messi, but before Lionel Messi there was Diego Armando Maradona.

Brian, what can I say?

Um, I think that it was an absolute master class by Zidane that day in 2006 against Brazil, but we had Maradona.

And the best individual performance all times belongs to Maradona June 22, 1986, Mexico City, Maradona 2, England 1.

Maybe the rest can compete for the second place.

Yeah, we have the goal of the century.

I remember my dad told me about this goal, but the, the open, the first goal, some, some defining the hand of God in Argentina.

What, what do we think?

So I, uh I remember watching this game with my dad and uh I think there was just a sense of disbelief.

You know, there was an expectation that OK, this can't stand, this will be ruled out.

Surely the referee saw this.

And then we can carry on with there was no VAR at the time.

There was no VR.

There seemingly was no referee because Maradona runs off celebrating and everyone runs off celebrating and it's this moment of hang, hang on, did, did nobody see, did nobody see what we saw?

And look, hats off, it was amazing, he was amazing.

England players couldn't get near him for the entire, for the entire game.

He was, he was fantastic, but there is a huge asterisk next to that goal and next to that performance.

I, I think that that day we saw the different dimensions of a genius like Maradona, someone capable of tricking and the referee or surprising Peter Chilton.

Surprising, he should have won that.

Challenge Maradona is tiny.

He surprised Chilton.

He didn't know that Maradona was playing basketball.

He was, he was tiny, a tiny genius, and then the other dimension, like if anybody had doubts about that first goal, he scored a second goal a few minutes later, that counts twice.

It doesn't work like that though.

That, that 2nd goal was amazing, arguably the best goal ever, particularly on that pitch, but the 1st goal.

Nah, you're not gonna convince him, Brian.

Zinedine Zidane, Diego Armando Maradona, two genius, but as we say many times in this studio, football is about taste.