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George Best is overrated. We all know the would be legend of George Best, we've all seen him play and we've all seen his skills. I'm not writing here to suggest Best was a bad player, or indeed anything other than a pretty good player, maybe tending toward a little on the average side. I want people to understand that when you hear the name George Best mentioned alongside Cruyff, Pele, Maradonna, Beckenbauer and Zidane, that it's a massive disservice to those names and huge marketing myth that Manchester United have worked hard to create.

1. All we have are the highlights.

George Best is overrated because you'll never ever get to see the games where Best didn't show up. Or was marked out of the game. The games where the morning cigarette didn't get him going quite enough or the partying the night before never quite shook out of his system. You just get the goals. Why would they play anything else? But this is exactly the problem when you compare players of today, even the ones not lauded as all-time greats, against the so called best. We see Pirlo having off games for Juventus. We see Suarez marked out of the game against Bayern. We're comparing a career with a highlight reel. It gives a really false sense of a player compared to the best players of today.

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2. George Best is overrated because the game was easier then. 

Name me a top player that smokes these days? Or carries on the way Best did? Look at the physique of the top players of today and compare them to Bobby Charlton and John Giles. It's quite simply a different game. In the time of George Best you were up against guys from industrial working class backgrounds, who enjoyed a pint of bitter and the pipe, probably loped into the game in their late teens and kept up the same lifestyle. Games were nowhere near as physically demanding, tactically complex or as regular as they are today. Defences have improved, players are faster, they sprint train, they weight train, they spend all day perfecting technique. They're plucked as young as 6 by places like Ajax and dedicate their whole lives to football. Best was playing against a bunch of amateurs by comparison. It's an old argument, yes, but it holds up.

3. The stats. 

Best scored 239 goals in 604 career club games. It's a very impressive stat. But only 137 of those were scored for Manchester United. Outside of his United career, Best played for a slew of joke teams in lower leagues who basically were there to prop up his lifestyle. 54 of his goals came for the mighty San Jose Earthquakes. 33 of those were scored playing indoor football. 28 for the L.A. Aztecs. Hibernian, Fort Lauderdale and Fulham number among his other career / lifestyle choices and from 1982 to 1984 he played for 7 different teams, Sea Bee, Hong Kong Rangers, Bournemouth, Brisbane Lions, Osbourne, Nuneaton Borogh and Tobemore United, scoring in all 2 goals. George Best is overrated.

Compare his stats to some of the stats knocking around today:

• Luis Suarez: 248 goals in 364 games
• Edison Cavani: 201 goals in 363 games
• Sergio Aguero: 212 goals in 401 games
• Gonzalo Higuain: 209 goals scored in 358 games
• Robert Lewandowski: 201 goals scored in 336 games
• Christian Vieri: 194 goals scored in 375 games

All of these goals scored at top level. I could go on here, but I think the point is made. There are so many players in the last 20 years whose goal to game ratio is miles ahead of Best. I've even left off the 2 most obvious players, who are simply on another planet.

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4. All the players since who have been better.

There have been so many. Yet Best's name is still the one bandied around with Maradonna, Pele, Eusebio and the rest. We know why. It's simple nostalgia. Listen to these names. Players who have been provably better but never seem to get hoisted up onto the select plinth of all-timers. I'll ignore all the guys I mentioned in the previous point, who definitely all count too.

Figo, Rivaldo, Totti, Weah, Maldini, Baresi, Laudrup, Romario, Baggio, Cannavaro, Batistutua, Xavi, Iniesta, Ronaldinho, Hagi, Crespo, Riquelme, Bergkamp, Henry, Platini. Again, I'm only stopping myself out of exhaustion. I could name names from many different countries across many different eras. Rui Costa, Alexis Sanchez, Raul.

George Best is massively overrated and not even in the same league as those guys!

5. Best isn't even rated outside of Britain & Ireland. 

Seriously. Talk to people on the continent. Or South America. They'll all inevitably go, 'Yeah, Best was a good player... but this guy...' and go on to name someone from their own country. It's simply what people do. I've had so many conversations with Italians about how Baggio is the greatest player of all time. It's a widely held opinion there. How many people do you think holds that opinion here? Who thinks Muller is the greatest forward of all time? So many people in Germany do. You see in football you have your heroes.  In Britain, they never really produced a really great player. They hype up a whole lot of guys, Gazza, Rooney, thugs like that. But none of them ever quite cut it. t's one of the great disasters of English football that they've never produced an Englishman even as good as Best, let alone the names I've been reeling off here. So, they latch on to a Northern Irishman and mention him whenever the conversation comes round to the greats.

6. The whole thing is a Manchester United marketing ploy. 

It really is. Once again. How many truly all time great players have played for what is supposedly the greatest and most popular team of all time. One. Ronaldo. And even then, he left immediately when he found his greatness, knowing it was simply too small a team for his talent. Look at the players who've played for Ajax, Bayern, Real Madrid, Milan, Barca and Juventus. All the greats have plied their trade there. United needed to hype up Best just so they could say they once had a great player. They worked and worked on his image. They sold posters and made documentaries. They did up replica shirts. Statues, songs and t-shirts. In the pantheon of hugely overrated United players, Cantona, Giggs, Beckham, Scholes, Robson etc, Best was made the king. They took the number 7 shirt and made a thing of it because of him, trying to claw their way into history with the big European sides aforementioned. It's a poor man's show. It's embarrassing. It's typical United. George Best is overrated.