T206 "Wagner" of Soccer Cards - Proposal

[aljurgela]

The Jose Nasazzi rookie card?

First off, this is as good a place and any to talk about how generally in soccer collecting - like many other sports (most prominently American Football and Basketball) - defenders do not get much respect. OK, they can get some respect - think Ozzie Smith in baseball or Rodman in basketball or Gary Payton or the hottest corner of the day in the NFL - but not much as a group. Soccer is much the same way. You need to be AMAZING to get any notoriety at all. Collectors and historian tend to focus on goal scorer's not goal "preventors" - save for the occasional great goalie like Lev Yashin or Beara.

Hence, most ratings have very few defenders in their lists of greatest players - save perhaps the most famous one, Franz Beckenbauer. OK, when onto Jose...

Nasazzi was the captain of soccer's first dynasty - the Uruguayan National Team. Uruguay won the two most important soccer tournaments of the 1920's - the Olympic Games in 1924 and 1928 and follow that up with a win in the inaugural World Cup in 1930 (where Nasazzi won the Best Player Award). Nasazzi was the leader on the field and because of his efforts and notoriety, Top End Soccer has him as the 75th best player ever. and IFFHS has him as the 26th best South American Player of the 20th Century. Read more about that here:

https://iffhs.de/iffhs-history-south...ury-1900-1999/

While this write up is pretty poor, you can learn more about him here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Nasazzi

OK, here is the card... by the way, one of these cards traded a couple of months ago on eBay and only brought a couple of hundred dollars (I bought it), but I think that it worth much more. Let me know your thoughts since nobody seemed to like the Puskas rookie card: