They say defences win titles, but that doesn't happen without a great centre-back partnership at the heart of your defence (at least when you play with a back four...).
Here at FourFourTwo, we've pored over the history books to rank the finest central defensive duos of all time – and it goes without saying that our countdown contains some truly legendary names (and perhaps a surprise inclusion or two).
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Brazil’s 1970 World Cup-winning team is best-known for the all-star plethora of attacking talent it boasted: how’s Jairzinho, Pele, Tostao and Rivellino for a front four?
But the South American giants wouldn’t have been crowned world champions for a third time if not for the strong defensive foundations provided by Brito and Wilson Piazza.
Greece’s Euro 2004 triumph will forever be looked back on as one of the greatest shocks in the history of international football – but Otto Rehhagel’s side will also be remembered as one of the dullest ever to win a major tournament.
That Greek team played some of the most depressingly defensive football imaginable – but it was extraordinarily effective (evidently), and its success was underpinned by the veritably rock-solid centre-back duo of Traianos Dellas and Michalis Kapsis – then of Roma and AEK Athens respectively.
As he guided Porto to 2003/04 Champions League glory, Jose Mourinho didn’t quite park the bus in the manner he would become rather notorious for later in his career, but he still benefitted from having an excellent centre-half pairing at his disposal.
Captain Jorge Costa was superbly complemented by Ricardo Carvalho – who was starting to come into his prime – as Porto – who were also crowned national champions that season – kept clean sheets in both semi-final legs and the final.
Ajax well and truly dominated European football at the start of the 70s, winning three straight European Cups – and keeping clean sheets in all three finals, defeating Panathinaikos, Inter and Juventus.
Dutchman Barry Hulshoff starred in all three of them, and he was partnered for the latter two by German Horst Blankenburg – with whom he also won two Eredivisie titles and two Dutch Cups.
As the centre-halves in England’s 1966 World Cup-winning team, Jack Charlton and Bobby Moore will be forever remembered as absolute legends.
Already icons for their respective clubs, Leeds and West Ham, Charlton and captain Moore played every game as Alf Ramsey’s Three Lions lifted the Jules Rimet trophy on home soil.
With the exception of captain Eric Gerets, a Belgian, every member of PSV’s 1987/88 treble-winning team was from the Netherlands or Denmark – and their central defensive pairing comprised one player of each nationality, Dane Ivan Nielsen and Dutch icon Ronald Koeman.
Under managerial newbie Guus Hiddink (what ever became of him?), PSV did the Dutch double before defeating Benfica on penalties to claim the European Cup – after Nielsen and Koeman had helped hold the Portuguese outfit to a 0-0 draw.
The highly reliable centre-half duo in Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ side of 2003/04 – who won the Premier League title without losing a game – Sol Campbell and Kolo Toure were key members of an immortal Gunners team.
Toure could count himself unfortunate to be the only member of Arsene Wenger’s back four not to make that season’s PFA Team of the Year, but the Ivorian proved more than an adept foil to England great Campbell.
Marcel Desailly and Laurent Blanc’s defensive partnership was broken for the 1998 World Cup final after the latter was suspended for seeing red during the semis, but it still played a big role in France’s historic triumph on home soil.
And two years later, at Euro 2000, the pair were together all the way up to and including the final, as Les Bleus made it two major tournament wins on the spin.
The 2019/20 season saw Liverpool finally get their hands on the Premier League trophy, ending their 30-year title drought. It also saw Jurgen Klopp’s Reds post the best defensive record for the second season running, letting in 33 goals.
That came after they had shipped just 22 during the previous campaign – when the quite underrated Joe Gomez and indisputably world-class Virgil van Dijk formed the robust foundations of the club’s sixth Champions League triumph.
With Jose Mourinho at the helm, Inter did the treble in 2009/10, completing the always impressive feat by beating Bayern Munich 2-0 in the Champions League final.
An all-South American centre-half duo of Argentina’s Walter Samuel and Brazil’s Lucio formed the core of a typically mean Mourinho back four, with Samuel being voted 2010 Serie A Defender of the Year.
Liverpool lifted all of their silverware of Rafael Benitez’s tenure with a centre-back tandem of Jamie Carragher and Sami Hyypia, two modern Anfield legends.
Local lad an one-club man Carragher partnered Finnish giant Hyypia – the Reds’ captain for several years – as Benitez’s side won the Champions League with that comeback against AC Milan in 2005, then the FA Cup the following year with a similarly dramatic recovery against West Ham, as well as conceding just 25 Premier League goals during the 2005/06 campaign – among the fewest in a single season of the competition.
At Euro 88, the Netherlands finally fulfilled their footballing potential by getting their hands on the major trophy which had eluded them for so long – and Rinus Michels’ triumphant team was packed with stars from back to front, including Frank Rijkaard and Ronald Koeman in the heart of defence.
Two of the most attack-minded defenders ever to play the game, the sensationally versatile Rijkaard and set-piece expert Koeman were absolutely integral to the Oranje’s success that summer.
Two Borussia Dortmund icons, Mats Hummels and Neven Subotic formed a wall-like centre-back partnership as the Black and Yellows won back-to-back Bundesliga titles under Jurgen Klopp in the early 2010s, doing the double in 2011/12.
German international Hummels and his Serbian colleague Subotic were crucial to Dortmund’s record of just 22 league goals conceded during the 2010/11 campaign – almost half as many as any other team in the German top flight.
Manchester City conceded a division-low 29 goals in claiming their first Premier League title in 2011/12, and Roberto Mancini’s team built their success on the defensive foundations of captain Vincent Kompany and Joleon Lescott.
City didn’t win the title in the seasons either side of that memorable campaign, but Kompany and Lescott expertly protected goalkeeper Joe Hart throughout, allowing him to keep 53 clean sheets across the three campaigns and scoop three straight Golden Glove awards.
Kings of the dark arts, Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid played an almost disgustingly defensive brand of football en route to winning the 2013/14 LaLiga title.
Quite evidently, though, it was also a very effective brand of football. Uruguay’s Diego Godin and Brazil’s Miranda – teammates for four seasons – were simply imperious in the middle of the back four as Atleti conceded a LaLiga-low 26 goals and reached their first Champions League final in 40 years.
Nottingham Forest’s back-to-back European Cup victories of 1979 and 1980 made them the first club to be crowned continental champions more times than they had won their own domestic league title – and it all started at the back for Brian Clough’s side, with the uncompromising double act of Englishman Larry Lloyd and Scot Kenny Burns.
The two great hardmen were instrumental as Forest kept a clean sheet in beating Malmo in the 1979 final then repeated the feat against Hamburg 12 months later.
Tony Adams captained Arsenal to their first Premier League title in 1997/98, and the long-serving Gunners skipper was at his brilliant best when partnered by Martin Keown – even though that was the case for just under half the season.
Arsene Wenger’s men conceded just 17 goals all campaign, a Premier League record at the time, thanks in no small part to Adams and Keown’s blend of defensive intelligence and general ruthlessness.
Has there ever been a centre-back pairing more downright annoying to play against than Sergio Ramos and Pepe? Well, no one at FourFourTwo possesses the footballing talent to truly know, but we imagine the answer is ‘No’.
But for all their rustling of the opposition, Ramos and Pepe were two of the best centre-halves on the planet at their peak together at Real Madrid – where they both won three LaLiga titles and three Champions Leagues apiece between 2008 and 2017.
The standout defensive partnership of the early Premier League era, Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister were integral to Manchester United’s dominance of the English top flight between 1992 and 1996.
Once dubbed ‘Dolly and Daisy’ by boss Alex Ferguson, Bruce and Pallister enjoyed the kind of mutual understanding most centre-back duos could only dream of, and it helped secure a shedload of silverware.
Bitter rivals at club level as Barcelona and Real Madrid players respectively, Gerard Pique and Sergio Ramos formed a fine centre-back duo for their country, Spain.
Ramos had won Euro 2008 and the 2010 World Cup as a right-back – but, with Carles Puyol injured for Euro 2012, he was shifted across to centre-half to partner Pique – and the two duly helped La Roja retain their European Championship crown.
Mark Lawrenson and Alan Hansen didn’t actually partner each other in the heart of the Liverpool defence for all that long in the grand scheme of things – but while they did, they came pretty damn close to impassable.
Republic of Ireland and Scotland internationals respectively, the no-nonsense Lawrenson and Hansen – who both took that attribute into their punditry careers, each in their own way – teamed up most memorably during the 1983/84 season, helping the Reds to the First Division title, League Cup and European Cup.
Undoubtedly two of Italy’s best defenders of all time, Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini delivered a defensive masterclass at Wembley as the Azzurri fought back to beat England in the final of Euro 2020 – with Chiellini lifting the trophy as skipper.
They combined pretty well in winning seven Serie A titles together at Juventus, too, Chiellini’s cultured left foot ideally complementing the natural right-sidedness of Bonucci.
Lilian Thuram won the World Cup and Euros with France as a right-back, but he was so phenomenally adaptable that he proved equally effective for Parma and Juventus at centre-half.
His most notable colleague in the middle of both clubs’ back fours was Fabio Cannavaro (yep, him again!), who won the 1998/99 Coppa Italia and UEFA Cup with the great Frenchman by his side.
Arguably the two best centre-backs of the 21st century, Fabio Cannavaro and Alessandro Nesta didn’t play alongside each other for as long as any neutral would have liked – but they still more than left their mark at the very top.
The pair were never club teammates, but they struck up a world-class alliance for Italy at youth and senior levels. It’s a shame that Nesta was injured for most of the 2006 World Cup, which the Azzurri won captained by Cannavaro.
Sergio Ramos was part of two all-time great centre-back duos during his 16-year association with Real Madrid, and the Spaniard’s link-up with modern French defensive legend Raphael Varane was his best.
Varane’s unwavering composure perfectly complemented Ramos’ more… industrial approach to the game, and the pair were simply imperious as Real won their second two of three straight Champions League crowns in 2017 and 2018.
Two of the finest defenders of all time, Gaetano Scirea and Claudio Gentile played alongside each other in some legendary back fours and back threes.
Serial trophy winners at Juventus, the elegant Scirea and fearsome hardman Gentile – both 1982 World Cup winners with Italy – were polar opposites stylistically – and that’s exactly what made them so good together.
Chelsea’s first two Premier League title triumphs were underpinned by the elite centre-half combination of captain John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho – who Jose Mourinho had brought with him to Stamford Bridge from Porto in 2004.
En route to the title in 2004/05, Terry and Carvalho’s partnership saw the Blues concede a thoroughly miserly 15 goals – equalling the English top-flight record set by Preston North End some 116 years earlier (except Chelsea did it in a 38-game campaign as opposed to a 22-game one).
Five Premier League titles, the Champions League, two League Cups and the Club World Cup: Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic didn’t fare too badly on the trophy front during their time together in the heart of Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United back four.
The greatest centre-back duo ever to grace the Premier League brought together the most cultured English defender of his generation and one of the toughest opponents around – who captained United for four years and became the first defender ever to win the Premier League Player of the Season award twice.
Spain won the 2010 World Cup, the first in their history, without conceding a single goal across four knockout games – and underpinning that impenetrability was the world-class centre-back pairing of Barcelona teammates Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique.
Puyol was the epitome of defensive dedication; Pique combined tough tackling with superb ball-playing ability. Together, they were something else.
Alessandro Nesta spent the best years of his career at Milan – and he spent them all alongside Paolo Maldini, who spent his whole career with the Rossoneri and cemented his status as the greatest full-back of all time.
Evidently, though, ‘Il Capitano’ was also more than adept in the middle of defence – and by the time Nesta joined him in 2002, he was well on his way to becoming a fully-fledged centre-half, and the partnership the pair formed was nothing short of legendary, yielding Champions League victory in 2002/03 and 2006/07.
Bayern Munich’s elite central defensive partnership as they lifted three successive European Cups between 1974 and 1976, Franz Beckenbauer and Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck had an intuitive understanding that made them an absolute force as a unit.
And as if that immense glory wasn’t enough, the duo joined forces at centre-back in West Germany’s Euro 1972 and 1974 World Cup-winning teams. The best experiences are those shared, right?
Undoubtedly two of the finest defenders ever to play the game, Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta struck up a serial silverware-winning partnership at Milan in the late 80s – and carried it well into the 90s.
Both highly versatile one-club men (ok, Costacurta had a loan spell with Monza right at the beginning of his career, but close enough), the duo starred in Arrigo Sacchi’s inimitable Rossoneri side which won back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990, flanked on either side of an all-time great back four by Mauro Tassotti and Paolo Maldini.
