One thing is to be the best player in a National league where there´s more than 30 games a year to get in shape, find your best level, understand your teammates and grasp completely the team gameplay. It´s another thing, absolutely different to play a tournament where you only have 3 games to do your best, finf your mojo and give everything striving to reach the next round, where having one single bad day could mean having to go back home rather than advancing to the knockout stage.
In a world cup, the players face the hardest exam of their lives, where the all their talents and skills are put to the test but, what really differentiates a good player from a great player is the mentality and attitude towards the games, towards certain situations, when facing a negative score... In a world cup the mind is as important as the body, which is why we decided to bring you a list of the players we consider have both, body and mind, which will allow them to lead their teams to victory. Their teammates are counting on them, the team´s performance vastly depends on these players´s performance.
10- HARRY KANE:
The most expensive player of the world at this moment made his debut with the National team in march 2015 and, being only 24 years old he arrives in the best shape ever. After a great season playing for the Tottenham Hotspurs where he became a forward reference, a lot of international clubs will be paying close attention to him, an outstanding performance could land him a big contract with one of the big European clubs.
The problem for England, at least in the past 4-5 world cups, is that they just can´t find a proper forward, a player who can actually define games on his own - like some of the players you´ll see on this list - and this world cup is his best chance to prove himself and become England´s indisputable key forward player. He won´t be alone, we won´t have to carry the team´s weight all by himself, he´ll have a great partner in Raheem Sterling and most likely, England´s performance will depend on how well these two amazing players understand each other in the field.
9- ROBERT LEWANDOWSKI:
This 29 year old Polish player played a key role in Poland´s world cup qualifier. He was the top scorer in the European qualifying stage with 16 goals. He is the reason Denmark ended up being a runner up instead of qualifying directly even though statistically, Denmark was the favorite to win that group. Perhaps Robert isn´t on hist best career moment but he indeed arrives to this compromise with a matureness that only age and experience in the game can give you; it´s worth noting that this is Lewandowsky´s first world cup and its certain he´ll give his everything to help his team reach the knockout stage, a team that relies on teamwork despite having the Bayern Munich forward star on their ranks.
8- MOHAMED SALAH:
Mohamed Salah´s case is a very sad one because he was probably one of the players that promised the most for this world cup, regrettably, in the football world, it´s not uncommon to see this happening quite frequently at the end of the season; the heavy workload and the absurd number of games a top player has to play is the main reason for players burning out and in some cases, get injuries they wouldn´t get if they had a proper rest time between matches. It was almost 30 years, since the world cup in Italy in 1990, that Egypt didn´t qualify to a world cup until now, and the whole team and the country knows this is mainly thanks to Salah and his amazing abilities and leading skills.
Several media and journalists have stated that the Pharaoh´s recovery is expected for the 3rd game of the Group stage against Saudi Arabia, so if everything works out well for Egypt and Salah´s teammates have a positive outcome in the previous games against Uruguay and Russia, we´ll be able to enjoy the Pharao´s football in the knockout stage.
7- ROMELU LUKAKU:
This 25 year old thundering forward faces his second world cup, where he expects to become the destructive forward Belgium desperately needs to actually be a serious candidate to win the World Cup. In a team full of stars, Lukaku faces an easier path to become the top scorer of the competition, being surrounded of players the size of Kevin De Bruyne or Eden Hazard, which makes Romelu a must follow man during this tournamente. Last world cup, this player that Manchester United paid 85 million euro for, played 4 games and scored one goal, hopefully this time he lives up to the expectations we all have for him.
6- LUIS SUAREZ:
8 games, 5 goals and 2 assists. These are the statistics this 31 year old Uruguayan crack has for himself. Luis started small and became big in every sense of the word and we hope that age is no exception and we get to see a mature and centered Suarez play his probably last world cup. Suarez had an embarrasing performance in the last world cup celebrated in Brazil where he bit Giorgio Chiellini´s shoulder in a bizarre game where he got suspended for the rest of the World cup; Suarez had already bitten Ivanovic´s arm in 2013.
Suarez´s arrives to Russia having already won every possible club level Cup, but without having won anything with his National team; he is not very popular among the people due to his aggressive and sometimes even reckless style but, we know he will bring out the garra Charrua and will carry his team on his shoulders if its necessary.
Part 2 of 2 coming soon.
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