Summary

Presenting the best team ever - of FourFourTwo's lifetime, at least: an XI who have defined the past 30 years of football. The best team ever… is it Barcelona under Pep? The Netherlands in the 70s? No – it's this, the best XI players in modern football history. To celebrate FourFourTwo's 30th birthday, we wanted to honour the greats of the past three decades.

We asked every one of FourFourTwo's football experts to give us the best-ever XI of the last 30 years. Just as in our own Perfect XI feature in the magazine, we asked for 11 players and three substitutes. Arranged in a 4-4-2, of course.

The criteria was simple. They simply had to have defined the last three decades of football, being at the forefront of the sport as the best in their position for one reason or another. While 'greatest-ever' debates often include the likes of Pele, Diego Maradona and Lev Yashin, we wanted to produce the greatest team in the modern game – considering stars' careers from 1994 onwards.

Each player picked by an expert in their starting line-up got a point; each substitute half a point. We then tallied up each player and narrowed our XI and bench down to 17 players. Our experts discussed the pros and cons of each player and how each one would provide balance to the players already selected.

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