Greats brought to book by Giles

Chatting to Packie Bonner this week, ahead of Celtic’s cruel defeat in Barcelona, I was somewhat taken aback when he didn’t hesitate for a second to hail Lionel Messi as the greatest footballer of all time.

Not that I was surprised Messi was in the running, you understand, even if, the following night at the Nou Camp, Neil Lennon’s battlers would do a better job than most at cramping his style. It was just that it seemed a little unusual to find someone of Bonner’s comparatively mature years being so unequivocal about elevating the current game’s outstanding personality above the mighty claims of all the giants of yesteryear, from Stanley Matthews through Pele to Zidane.

John Giles would also have Messi there or thereabouts but, when it comes to the crunch, he reserves the ultimate accolade for Bobby Charlton. And, in its own way, that’s a surprising choice too. Again, not because the brilliant Charlton doesn’t deserve a nomination but because the conventional wisdom, refined over years of intense debate, is that you can’t look beyond the fab four of Pele, Maradona, George Best and Johann Cruyff to locate the greatest of the great. But Giles does and, when thinking outside the box — and that means literally as well as metaphorically — he also comes up with a startling candidate for the role of Pete Best: Nottingham Forest’s John Robertson.