Zinedine Zidane of France was named as the best European footballer of the last 50 years by fans on Thursday, finishing narrowly ahead of Germany's Franz Beckenbauer and Dutchman Johan Cruyff.
Zidane, polled 123,582 votes, just 1,013 more than 'Der Kaiser' Beckenbauer, who totalled 122,569, with Cruyff third on 119,332.
Overall, more than 150,000 fans cast a total of seven million votes in the public poll, organised by European soccer's governing body UEFA to mark the Golden Jubilee of their foundation in 1954.
| |||||||||||
The final three were announced at a Golden Jubilee ceremony at the start of UEFA's annual congress being held in Cyprus for the first time.
They topped a final list of 50 players gradually revealed by UEFA since the start of this year. Marco Van Basten of the Netherlands was fourth with 117,987, while Alessandro Costacurta of Italy was 50th with 42,511 votes.
The top 10 was rounded out by Italian goalkeeper Dino Zoff in fifth place, followed by Real Madrid's Alfredo Di Stefano in sixth, Portugal's Eusebio seventh, Soviet goalkeeper Lev Yashin eighth, France's Michel Platini ninth and Italian defender Paolo Maldini 10th.
The highest placed English player was Bobby Charlton in 14th place, while his old Manchester United team mate George Best of Northern Ireland, widely regarded as one of the world's all-time greats, was a surprisingly lowly 19th.
UEFA have been revealing successively higher positions on their website over the last few weeks. There were four West Germans and four Italians in the top 20, three from the Netherlands, two from England and two from France.
WORLD'S BEST
Zidane, who will turn 32 during this year's European Championship in Portugal starting in June, is already the FIFA World Player of the Year, an award he won for the third time in December.
Like Beckenbauer, he has won the World Cup and the European Championship with France and the European Cup with Real Madrid.
He scored twice in the 1998 World Cup final when France beat Brazil 3-0 in Paris and volleyed one of the most spectacular goals ever seen in a major final when Real beat Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 to win the European Cup for the ninth time in Glasgow in 2002.
Beckenbauer is the only man to win the World Cup as both a player (1974) and a coach (1990) and also won the European Cup with Bayern Munich in the 1970s.
Cruyff won the European Cup with his club Ajax Amsterdam in the 1970s and was in the Dutch side beaten by Beckenbauer's West Germany in the 1974 World Cup final.
Players whose careers have not lasted at least 10 years were not included in the poll.
More from rediff