If not the best than certainly among 3 best defenders ever. Legendary sweeper, IMO in ball recuperations and tackling by far the best player in history of football. Not particularly tall for a defender, but he was a real fury on the pitch. With a unique style, arrogant, imperious, sometimes ruthless. Commands superbly the back line, in possss of sublime technique, however, mixed with the hardness of the tackles and the extraordinary speed in recoveries. Player of extraordinary intelligent reactions and anticipating, smart positioning, tireless, fast, explosive, very gifted technically with calm finishing in front of the goal. With his fantastic long passes from back line he was at the same time the playmaker - regista of Milan with good offensive play, intuitive and skillful with the ball. For some time he was penalty taker in the team, he could score and provide, although not so offensive minded like the side backs, he was more effective in attacking play than most of them. He could dribble at full speed couple of opponents in a row and than make perfect final pass to strikers, or place the ball in top angle himself. His only weakness was heading, he never had some great skills with the head because of his short size although he had solid jump. Although small, he was very muscuolous with good doze of aggression, he'd usually outmuscle much bigger opponents. Capable of providing spectacular ball recuperations and acrobatic interventions in front of his goal, very brave with fantastic tactical awareness.

I know that proposing a 99 value in my first post as a member of this forum is bold but how do you think of giving Baresi 99 in defense?

Personally, I think that Baresi is the only player in the history of the game who could/should have this value which means he would be superior even to Nesta whose 97 is perfect, in my opinion. What convinced me of that were especially his displays in the '90 World Cup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKQUcjizTIQ This is by far the best defensive positional play and ability to dipossess the opponent with technique I've ever seen of any player. Especially his behaviour in 2:10, 4:55 and 7:01. Also his display in the World Cup final '94 against prime Romário (although Baresi had been injured throughout almost the whole tournament) is just inhuman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boPQNpPvJq0, for example 0:49, 1:13, 2:26 and 3:05.

Greetings from Germany!

WC 2006 Fabio Cannavaro says hello

Well, honestly, I've never considered Cannavaro to be that great, but I have to admit that I've seen him play primarily at Real Madrid where his performances were very poor, in my opinion.