just saw some old footage of him. Imo, he was one of the most brilliantly creative players of the 90s and the true inspiration in Cruyff's dream team.
He combined great technique and skill with marvelous vision and passing ability. In comparison with say Zidane, whilst Zinedine is clearly superior technically, one of my gripes with him has always been that he doesn't impose himself enough on matches week in and week out, doing the work to get him to the top of the assist charts, which was something you could count on a player like Laudrup to do.
That goal for barca where Laudrup skips past two players, lobs it just a few yarsover a third for stoichkov to lob the keeper at close range stands out to me as one of the most inpsired goals I've ever seen.
The lob and the masked pass has always been lovely trademarks of his game. I thoroughly enjoyed those two games against Nigeria and Brazil in the 98 world Cup when it seemed he was past it and then suddenly burst into life as if back in his prime. And being the architect behind one of the best goals of the tournament when he produced a masked lob to put Sand clean on goal against Nigeria seemed a fitting way to mark the end of his career.
Curious as to how highly he is rated by people here in comparison with players like Hagi, Baggio, Del Piero et al of the 90s.
