It can be hard work being a footballer. All those cold, rainy nights in Stoke, all those trips around Europe to play teams no one has ever heard of and for what? Some players might get all the plaudits, but others get hardly any at all. No matter how hard they try and no matter how good they are they'll never win the Ballon d'Or, they'll always be in someone else's shadow, and people will never be ringing their praises in the pub.
While the 'Ronaldo or Messi' debate is never ending, there are other players who are playing the games of their lives, breaking records and playing important roles in championship winning teams who will rarely get the credit they deserve. This is for them, the most underrated players in world football.
Wayne Rooney
Age: 29
Club: Manchester United
Position: Forward
Alright, admittedly being the England captain means Wayne Rooney probably isn't that underrated. No matter what he does, though, people are always quick to rubbish him or question if he's even actually that good. Be England's highest ever goalscorer? Close in on being Manchester United's all-time top scorer? Play over 100 times for his country before he's even 30? Whatever is asked of Rooney, he does it. So why do so many people hate him rather than see him as one of England's best?
Disciplinary issues, repeated transfer requests at Manchester United and calling out England fans on worldwide TV have done little to endear him the casual fan. In recent years, though, he's calmed down a bit and focused on becoming a legend at Old Trafford. He's reinvented himself as a deep lying forward, who's intelligence with the ball makes him a far more useful player than the force of nature he was in his younger years, and his record of 299 goals in 668 games for club and country speaks for itself.
Alvaro Arbeloa
Age: 32
Club: Real Madrid
Position: Right back
There have been times when Alvaro Arbeloa was even underrated by Real Madrid. When he was 21, after he'd only played for them twice, he was sold to Deportivo and wound up at Liverpool as part of Rafael Benitez's Spanish revolution. His time at Liverpool was good, if unspectacular, and it wasn't until Steve Finnan's career began to peter out that he finally established himself at Anfield. So Real Madrid's decision to re-sign him in 2009 was a head scratcher. His move to Madrid looked even more out of place when other new arrivals at the club that summer included Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema.
In the years since then, he's quietly racked up almost 150 league games for Real Madrid, won every competition in the world and got most of his 56 caps for Spain. Those years have seen Real Madrid create an almost unbreakable defence, and Arbeloa's been a key part of that. He's not Real Madrid's first choice anymore but the last few years have seen him be one of the club's most established, and underrated, players.
James Milner
Age: 29
Club: Liverpool
Position: Centre midfielder
No matter how many times he plays for England, no matter how much Man City paid for him all those years ago, there's one label that's always stuck with him: 'Boring Milner'. It all started so well for him, he was briefly the second youngest player ever in the Premier League and the league's youngest goalscorer. He was destined to be England's next big thing, but the hype didn't predict the type of player he would become. He isn't flashy and he'll never capture a nation's imagination, but he's one of the best around at what he does.
The job he does is one of football's most important but unglamorous jobs, it's the platform on which Milner's teammates like Aguero, Coutinho or David Silva can play. On top of that, there's the occasional performance like his one against Bayern Munich in December 2013. He, pretty much single handedly, dragged Man City back from 2-0 down, before scoring a screamer to give them the win. Just give the lad a chance.
Bas Dost
Age: 26
Club: Wolfsburg
Position: Forward
You can be forgiven if Bas Dost isn't a name you recognise straight away. For some reason, he's never got the attention he deserves. He first started making a name for himself at Heerenveen in his native Netherlands, where he banged 45 in 66 games. That led to a move to Wolfsburg where, after a slower start, he's scored 30 times in 65 games. His stats are so good that, last season, the CEIS Football Observatory named him the third best striker in Europe, behind only Messi and Robben. Despite all of this, he's only been capped twice by his country and, while Wolfsburg's other standout players (we're looking at you, Kevin De Bruyne) are moving for extortionate fees, there is scarcely even a rumour of Bas Dost moving on to bigger and better things.
Robbie Keane
Age: 35
Club: LA Galaxy
Position: Forward
Robbie Keane is, in many ways, one of the Premier League's forgotten greats. It could be because of his disastrous time at Liverpool, or it could be because he packed his bags and moved to LA when he was still only 31. Either way, people don't seem to realise how good he was, or how good he still is. It's been forgotten that Inter Milan thought he was good enough to drop £13 million on him when he was only 20, or that he scored 91 league goals for Tottenham, or that he is widely seen as one of the MLS' best ever players. In fact, he's so well thought of in the States that it's him, rather than someone like David Beckham, against whom Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Kaka are going to be judged. It's his international record, though, where he really stands out. With 67 goals for the Republic of Ireland, Keane is now the highest international goalscorer in Europe who's still playing, and the fourth highest of all time. He's scored for Ireland in everyone of the last 18 years and has held the country's international goalscoring record for 11 years.
Sergio Busquets
Age: 27
Club: Barcelona
Position: Centre midfielder
To be fair, you can kind of get why Sergio Busquets isn't the most spoken about footballer in the world. When you look at the players he's played with in midfield, one of them is going to have to be overshadowed. As Barcelona and Spain dominated the world over the last decade, Busquets was the silent third part of the Xavi-Iniesta axis. His club and country are two of the best attacking sides of all time, but it was the goalscorers that got the attention rather than the omnipresent midfielder who started so many of those moves. Playing in front of the back four, he was essential in breaking up opposition attacks and then acting as the base from which the moves started, setting the tempo and letting the other players flourish.
The holding midfield role is one of football's most important positions, legends like Claude Makelele made their name there but even he was underrated at the time. In recent years, the position has had a renaissance thanks to players like Nemanja Matic, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Xabi Alonso. This has led to Makelele getting the acclaim he deserves, and hopefully it'll mean Busquets stops being so underrated. His six goals for Barcelona and his two for Spain show that he's never going to be the most headline grabbing player, but it's his 214 league games for Barcelona and his 77 Spanish caps that really show just how important he is to those teams. And he's still only 27.
Michael Carrick
Age: 34
Club: Manchester United
Position: Centre midfielder
In many ways, Michael Carrick has been so underrated because of the generation he was born into. He's the closest thing England has to a Xabi Alonso, he's played almost 400 times for Man United, and he's won pretty much every club trophy possible. But he was also trying to make a name for himself as a central midfielder while Paul Scholes, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard were the dominating forces in English football. It was always going to be a struggle, but the fact that players like Scott Parker and Gareth Barry have kept him out of the England team is inexcusable. Now that he's in to his mid 30s, his career is having a resurgence. Louis Van Gaal still sees him as one of the most important players at Man United and he's almost definitely going to add to his 33 caps.
Martin Demichelis
Age: 34
Club: Manchester City
Position: Centre back
His first season in the Premier League wasn't the best, and it's hung over Martin Demichelis' career in England ever since. His signing was a bit of a surprise and the £4 million Man City dropped on him wasn't like the rest of the club's big spending on big names. That dodgy start also means that people forget just how good he was for almost 250 games for Bayern Munich, or the form for Malaga that led to his move to England. The undoubted low point came against Barcelona in the Champions League: Demichelis gave away a penalty and got sent off as City went on to lose 2-0 at home and get knocked out.
After the shaky start, though, Demichelis came good and by the end of the season he was an important player as City won the league. The season after that, once he'd settled in to English shores, he showed why City had decided to sign him and why he's been a mainstay of the Argentina squad for so long. Eventually, everyone will forget the Demichelis of the 2013/14 season and we can all move on.
Javier Mascherano
Age: 31
Club: Barcelona
Position: Centre midfielder/centre back
Back in 2006, Javier Mascherano made a surprise move to West Ham. You'd imagine a player of Mascherano's ability would go straight into a team like West Ham's side, he didn't. Instead, Hayden Mullins was the first choice holding midfielder and Mascherano was forced to seek new pastures further north in Liverpool. Mascherano's time at West Ham was a mystery, by the time he arrived he was one of the most hyped young players in the world and he was already a full Argentina international. West Ham, on the other hand, were flirting with relegation and only stayed in the Premier League because of the controversial goals of Carlos Tevez. They could've done with someone like Mascherano.
At Liverpool, Mascherano realised his potential and earned the dream move to Barcelona. While at Barcelona, he became one of the most important defensive players at the club, whether that was in midfield or, later, in defence. It was all well and good for the team to have Messi, Villa, Iniesta, Neymar and Suarez, but without a good defence they wouldn't have been anywhere near as successful. For the last five and a bit years, Mascherano has been that defence. But, because of the nature of football, he was never going to get the same plaudits that his goalscoring teammates got. That didn't stop Roy Hodgson viewing him as the best player in the world, though.
Carlos Sanchez
Age: 30
Club: River Plate
Position: Right winger
It's only been the last year or so that Carlos Sanchez has begun to get any plaudits at all. The winger's made his name at Liverpool (not that one) in Uruguay, before moving to Argentina in 2009. It was last season, though, that he really lived up to the hype. His club, River Plate, won the Copa Libertadores and Sanchez's four goals, including a penalty in the final, along the way were an important part of them getting there. His exploits meant he was named the second best player in South America and capped off the season that he finally broke through into the Uruguay national team, at the tender age of 29. Whereas the other star players in River Plate's dominant season (who took up all the places in the continent's best player award) have either already played away from their home continent or have made their way to Europe since the season finished, Sanchez looks like the one that got away. He's undoubtedly one of the most exciting players in Argentina right now, but it's unlikely he'll ever get a move to the bright lights of Europe that he deserves.
