When David Beckham announced that the wages for his five-month stint at Paris Saint-Germain would be donated to a local children's charity, the reaction from football fans was predictably mixed. Some were astounded by his generosity, others were suspicious of his motives and the cynics among us were furious. They thought he wasn't giving away his money in the right way and was looking for publicity, tax benefits or to exploit a potentially lucrative relationship with the club's Qatari owners.

Whether you thought Beckham was serving others or serving himself and passing it off as charity, one thing was clear. Football fans are increasingly cynical about players. That fans can be aghast at a footballer giving money to poor children shows the state we are in. With this in mind, it's worth celebrating the few players left that everyone likes: the guys you can't help but enjoy and respect even when they're playing for your rivals.

Here is a team selected from players that seem unobjectionable. No doubt, some of you will disagree. That's the whole point. Put your own 11 in the comments section below and we'll try to piece together an indisputably popular team.

1) José Luis Chilavert

Not many goalkeepers go into a World Cup as their country's designated free-kick taker. Chilavert was always a little different. He became the first goalkeeper to take a direct free-kick on goal at a World Cup finals when he banged one on to the bar against Bulgaria at France 98. He went even closer against Slovenia in 2002 and scored eight goals for Paraguay in total. His career was far from spotless – he brawled with Faustino Asprilla, spat at Roberto Carlos and received a suspended six-month prison sentence in France – but he took some great free-kicks.

2) Gary Neville

Neville would have been nowhere near this list a few years ago, but now that he's describing the game rather than playing it, everyone loves him – even print journalists, who tend to be slow to praise their better paid colleagues on TV. Sky takes a lot of stick for ruining football – or "inventing it in 1992" as the old line goes – but its coverage is second to none. For an example of Neville's ability to bring the game to life, watch his masterclass on diving. He's detailed, sensible, fair, passionate, honest and manages to tell you things you didn't know already.

3) Benoît Assou-Ekotto

Ideally players should develop an affinity with the team they play for, but kissing the badge and telling the media how in love they are with the fans fools no one. Supporters prefer an honest approach to desperate crawling. No one is more honest than Benoît Assou-Ekotto. The Spurs defender is perfectly candid about his complex relationship with his trade. Playing football is a great good job, but it's still his work. He joined Spurs for professional reasons and isn't going to try to convince fans that he goes to bed in a replica shirt and dreams about walking up the High Road on a Saturday.

"If I play football with my friends back in France, I can love football," he told David Hytner in one of the most refreshing interviews you could ever read. "But if I come to England, where I knew nobody and I didn't speak English, it's only a job. Yes, it's a good job and I don't say that I hate football but it's not my passion. I arrive in the morning at the training ground at 10.30 and I start to be professional. I finish at one o'clock and I don't play football afterwards.

"When I am at work, I do my job 100%. But after, I am like a tourist in London. I have my Oyster card and I take the tube. I eat. I don't understand why everybody lies. The president of my former club said I left because I got more money in England, that I didn't care about the shirt. I said: 'Is there one player in the world who signs for a club and says: "Oh, I love your shirt? Your shirt is red. I love it."' He doesn't care. The first thing that you speak about is the money."

4) Vincent Kompany

The captain of Khaldoon al-Mubarak's plaything club ought to be objectionable. Like most of his colleagues, he was parachuted into a struggling Premier League club that inherited a stupid amount of wealth from a man who had cared little about the club or its history. Kompany should be the personification of all that is annoying about modern football, but he is intensely impressive. He captains Belgium; no one hates Belgium. He has a Twitter feed worth following. He speaks five languages but still gives better interviews than any of his English colleagues. He uses his public profile to good effect. He's basically Clarke Carlisle but better at football.

5) Moritz Volz

Andrey Arshavin is well known for having a quirky website, where he fields questions from the public. When asked if he is afraid of bears, Arshavin replies: "On the contrary, I like bears." When asked about his use of hair gel, he says: "I don't have an ad contract with any hair gel producer. I use water before the game. A lot depends on water chemical composition." Arshavin's site is worth a read, but it has nothing on Volzy.com.

6) Juninho

It seems preposterous now, but not so long ago the most exciting player in England played for Middlesbrough. Juninho had three spells in the north-east, where he endeared himself to the city and the rest of the country. He was known as the TLF (The Little Fella) to locals, who would often see him playing football with kids in the streets near the house he shared with his parents. The little Brazilian really seemed to care about the club. He cried on the pitch when Middlesbrough were relegated in 1997, the season the club lost the League and FA Cup finals. When he returned and won the League Cup with Middlesbrough, he said the achievement meant more to him than winning the 2002 World Cup with Brazil.

7) Georgi Kinkladze

Manchester City's owners have spent more than £1bn since they bought the club in 2008, but they are yet to sign a player as exciting as Georgi Kinkladze. The late 1990s were a tough time for City fans and the Georgian's time at the club sounds like a disaster in retrospect, but for a short time City had their very own Maradona. The club suffered two relegations during his three seasons in Manchester and his managers didn't know what to do with him. Alan Ball, the first of six managers Kinkladze played under at City, reckoned he was the "best player to ever come out of eastern Europe", but Joe Royle was not so sure: "To the supporters he was the only positive in all that time. To me, he was a big negative. I am not saying that City's ills were all down to Kinkladze, but there was too much about the whole Kinkladze cult phenomenon that wasn't right. Too often since his arrival, the team had under-performed. I couldn't help deducing that, contrary to popular opinion, he would be my weak link not my strong one." Royle's point is an intriguing one, but in this case the fans knew best.

8) Clarence Seedorf

Bleating about the quality of punditry on Match of the Day is second nature to the cynical fan, but sometimes an interloper joins the programme and shows just how good the coverage could be. Gianluca Vialli and Clarence Seedorf joined the BBC team for Euro 2012 and elevated proceedings. Vialli was excitable and passionate, while Seedorf offered a cool analytical approach. Vialli has played and managed in England, but Seedorf turned up and excelled in one of his six languages. Of course, it helps that he has won the European Cup four times, with three clubs.

9) Peter Crouch

If Assou-Ekotto should be celebrated for his honesty, Crouch deserves greater praise for throwing some added wit. In one of the great one-liners of sports history, Crouch replied to a question about what he would be if not a footballer with the words: "A virgin." It takes a special type of player to deliver that kind of gag – the type of player who would react well when offered a timeshare flat in a penis-shaped development.

10) Gianfranco Zola

If you have a spare 24 minutes, watching this will be the best thing you do today.

11) Dimitar Berbatov

When Cristiano Ronaldo returns to Old Trafford next week, Manchester United fans will give him an uproarious reception. They've been singing about him since he left. Ronaldo was a great player and deserves his moment, but his exit was hardly the model of how to leave a club. He wasn't as bad as Carlos Tevez, but he clearly didn't want to be in Manchester during his final season and stropped around the pitch to make his point.

Dimitar Berbatov was different. He respected the authority above him and did not create a fuss when he was dropped. His agent admitted that Berbatov felt uncomfortable about receiving a high salary when he was not performing regularly for the club; Ronaldo feels "sad" when he's not picking up a big enough cheque for his image rights.

When Berbatov returned to Old Trafford with Fulham, he did not try to use the fixture to rile his former employers. He turned up, played the game and went home. There were no Tevez-style histrionics. Berbatov is a class act. Jamie O'Hara tells a story of training with him at Tottenham. "I was yelling for the ball," O'Hara said. "Berba dropped his shoulder and, without looking, he played a pinpoint pass right to my feet. After training, he said to me: 'I know where you are. You don't have to shout.'" Just keep calm and pass him the ball.

Some of the best selections from the comments section

Goalkeepers

Marcus Hahnemann

David James

Edwin Van Der Sar

Dani Mallo

Defenders

Pablo Zabaleta

Javier Zanetti

Paolo Maldini

Philipp Lahm

Dennis Irwin

Paul McGrath

Leighton Baines

Laurent Blanc

Sami Hyypia

Carlos Puyol

Midfielders

Kevin Kilbane

Xabi Alonso

Sergio Torres

Andrea Pirlo

Fabrice Muamba

Juan Mata

Nolberto Solano

Gary Speed

Wilson Palacios

Damiano Tommasi

Andrés Iniesta

Attackers

Henrik Larsson

Roberto Baggio

Matt Le Tissier

Ole Gunnar Solskjær

Jürgen Klinsmann

Dion Dublin

George Weah

Faustino Asprilla

Peter Beardsley

Diego Forlán

Sergio Agüero

Tony Yeboah