L'Équipe's 2020 ideal eleven includes a single player from the Spanish league, Madrid defender Sergio Ramos, and is dominated, with five current or former members of their squad, for Bayern Munich, winner of a good bunch of titles starting with the Champions League.
The five chosen from the Munich club in the squad presented this Monday by the French sports newspaper are the Polish Robert Lewandowski, the Spanish Thiago Alcántara (now at Liverpool), the Canadian Alphonso Davies and the Germans Joshua Kimmich and Manuel Neuer.
Together with Lewandowski, The other forwards chosen are Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo, from Juventus Turin, Brazilian Neymar, from Paris Saint Germain (PSG), and Belgian Kevin de Bruyne, from Manchester City.
Along with Ramos and Davies, the ideal defense is completed by two members of Liverpool, the Dutch Virgil Van Dijk and the English Alexander Arnold.
The XI of the newspaper L'Équipe with Ramos and Thiago as the only Spanish representatives and five players from Bayern Munich.
L'Équipe
By Sergio Ramos, L'Équipe highlights the 10 goals he scored in the Spanish league last year: “he is the best scorer among the defenders of the five major championships”.
He also notes that it is “as important defensively as it is effective offensively, particularly when taking a penalty”; and that he has become the European player who has worn the shirt of his national team the most times (178).
About Thiago Alcántara, the praise is centered on the fact that he is one of the footballers of the great European championships through which the ball passes the most (119 touches on average in 90 minutes), since only the Italian Marco Verrati, from PSG, surpasses him in that.
As to Neymar notes that in the Champions League he caused 52 fouls to be whistled on his opponents, 31 more than any other player.
“Despite the festivities and the controversies,” the sports newspaper emphasizes, “the Brazilian continues to be, above all, a formidable footballer. When it evolves at its best, it is almost unstoppable. He has achieved it all at the national level with PSG, which he led to his first Champions League final. “