Can there really be someone better than Messi in modern football?
- Thread starter VorZakone
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Can =/= will
Sir Alex can't be expected to foresee Jones spending most of his career in the treatment room.
I'd have thought this past season where Messi has been overshadowed by Suarez would have taught some of you to see the light.
Still trying mate? C'mon now, even you can now surely see the light after all of this time.
Back in the day people didnt think that anyone would ever show up who would be better than Pele. The same thoughts were revisited when Maradona was around. Bebe showed up and the world thought nobody could ever be better than him. There will be someone after Messi who people will think is the greatest. the cycle goes on.
He was never overshadowed by Suarez.
To get a player so dominant statistically you're going to need a very imbalanced era like the one we're in. If that is not the case in club football then I doubt you'll get a consensus of a player being better than him.
Messi is not the best ever.
Pretty much undisputed at club level but he was lucky to appear in the best era in Barca's history.
We will never know how he would of gone in a lesser team or another league.
I still have an issue with the HGH and compare Ronaldo vs Messi to the Warne vs Muralitharan debate.
For me at international level he doesn't claim that title not by a long shot.
Cryuff, Maradona & Pele all ahead of him at the moment IMHO.
Cruyff for me is the best ever - technical, driven, focused, leader of men, tactician, visionary etc just extremely unlucky not to win a world cup. His legacy lives on.
Pretty much undisputed at club level but he was lucky to appear in the best era in Barca's history.
We will never know how he would of gone in a lesser team or another league.
I still have an issue with the HGH and compare Ronaldo vs Messi to the Warne vs Muralitharan debate.
For me at international level he doesn't claim that title not by a long shot.
Cryuff, Maradona & Pele all ahead of him at the moment IMHO.
Cruyff for me is the best ever - technical, driven, focused, leader of men, tactician, visionary etc just extremely unlucky not to win a world cup. His legacy lives on.
It's strange that you bring up Lord Cruijff and use he fact that Messi has played in Barcelona for his whole career against him. Cruijff played for the same manager, Rinus Michels at Ajax for 95% of his time at Ajax and almost the exact same team and the total football tactics, with Cruijff at the helm led to Ajax's golden era success. For the NT, they used the exact same tactic and Philosophy and had the EXACT same coach Cruijff had at Ajax and smilar players so Cruijff never had to change his game at all. At Barcelona he contributed to one league title and that was it. Rinus Michels was the manager once again and Cruijff's role never changed. He played the exact same role albeit I feel he was more of a leader there than at Ajax. Pele played for 'super teams' at Santos and then with all stars starting for Brazil and they won a WC without him 1962 and in 1970 he wasn't even their best attacker, Jairzinho was.
Maradona is has the best WC performance in terms of being the really only outsanding footballer in his team but Argentina had a good tactical edge that made up for thier talent deficit.
Cruijff has the highest football IQ of any attacker and perhaps Xavi Hernandez is the only player on that level. But to use the playing style and one club arguement against Messi and not Cruijff, who was successful only under the same system at Ajax, then Barcelona then the NT seems bizzarre.
One thing that modern players benefit from are the pitches. You see a lot of managers complaining about the grass levels, in those days, the pitches were horrible to watch. I sometimes refer to modern football as the open era. Attacking players benefit a lot from so many things in this era. The offside rule now heavily favours attackers and attacking play as Fifa inteded with the rule change and tackling from behind is now outlawed. Some of the games played in those eras wouldn't be finished today because most of the players would see red cards. The GKs not being able to pick up back passses also heavily favours attackers of this era. People need to take these things into consideration before declaring ONE player to be the best over all eras. The 2000s are vastly different from the 2010s so I find it strange when people start comparing directly over 20-50+ years.
I don't think there is a best ever as the conditions are too different. I think there are tiers. Comparing goal records are pointless because as I said in a previous post, neither Messi nor CR would post their numbers in Serie A in the late 80s or 90s. I believe Messi is in the same Tier as Cruijff,Pele, Di Stefano and Maradona and together they are the 5 kings of football. They are all great for different reasons. DI Stefano changed the face of European football, Pele changed the face of International football, Cruijff changed the face of tactical football, Maradona perhaps was the greatest in individuality and absolute ball control.
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Since when has Sir Alex been God? He is the same person that thought Moyes would be a good hire and Pogba wasn't worth starting ahead of Rafael.
Anyway form your own opinion. Managers are always bias.
How is he lucky when he has delivered so much for Barca? Are they not lucky to have him?
The quality of posters are rubbish these days
Again I say we will see players of messi's ability but none will ever have the luck to have the absolutely perfect conditions to succeed that he has.
Everyone is surpassed eventually, but Messi is quite simply the greatest player we've ever had (with the slight caveat that we don't have enough footage of Di Stefano to make a real comparison). I was a football mad kid when Maradona was at his peak, and the idea that he was better than Messi is absolutely ludicrous.
I'm surprised this thread is going for so long. We've seen one Messi already, why shouldn't there be another one some day? And given that everything is getting more and more efficient and professional why shouldn't that guy be even better?
There will be someone better along, there always is. Every year clubs train more young players from all over the world, the likelihood of a talented player slipping away are reduced, they get better training from younger and younger ages.
Progression is relentless, comparing this era to 50 years ago players are stronger, faster, fitter and more importantly spend many more hours training and are better prepared. This will only continue, records will be broken and people will have the same discussion about another player in 50 years.
Progression is relentless, comparing this era to 50 years ago players are stronger, faster, fitter and more importantly spend many more hours training and are better prepared. This will only continue, records will be broken and people will have the same discussion about another player in 50 years.
Well maybe he's too exhausted to repeat delivering so much for his national team then !!!!! Poor little mite I've heard every excuse for this - not used correctly, tactics, shit management etc. If he was the best ever he would be bangin them in and tearing up international defenses regardless.
I still cannot believe people claim he's the best ever when he hasn't done it at that level.
If the claim was best club player ever then no probs.
And just what is the criteria for the BEST ever ?
Just club ? Just national ? Both ?
Why? He was deficient in GH, he got medication to bring him to normal levels. How is that an issue?
Ability is one thing I agree but I do have a hard time seeing someone replicate his consistency and records in addition to being a great playmaker. This player will have to basically have a better international record and match/surpass Messi's contribution at club level. If a player like that does come then goodness me that's scary.
I have never understood that argument against him, i am sure many players have deficient eyesight and wear contact lenses to play.
Why don't you talk about Messi's record against Chelsea and English clubs in general in two-legged ties and excluding penalties? His general contribution also? Or his record against Italian clubs up until 2010 or 2011 before they turned to second-rate teams (Juventus excluded)? Why don't you talk about Messi's perfomances in the big competitions, absolutely nowhere near what he is doing in Spain? And when you say Suarez outscored Ronaldo, remember that Ronaldo was injured or played injured for decent portions of the season, and it still took Suarez to score 4 goals in multiple games in the run in against the beach boys to beat him. Also, you saying Van Nistelrooy wasn't a great footballer loses you any credibility you think you may have. His finishing is better than any footballer currently playing anywhere in the world. That alone puts him in the echelon of the greatest strikers in the past couple of decades at least.
Pele clearly was the best player in that Brazil side and the best player of the tournament. Jairzinho just scored more goals.
When did I say say Sir Alex = God?
I was merely pointing out that the opinion of the best manager ever in the sport might be worth listening to.
Messi's record against English clubs is excellent. Key player in 2 CL finals against Utd, toyed with City, put 4 past Arsenal, and was generally threatening against Chelsea beating players for fun, just unlucky with finishing.
His performances against most English sides have been very good. The only terrible games I have seen him have were in 09 vs Chelsea. He demolished United in 2 cl finals. Demolished Arsenal in the home game in 10 and was great in both legs against them in 11. He was consistently creating chances even when he wasn't scoring. Even in the '12 games vs Chelsea he was creating chances against Chelsea despite missing a penalty in the home leg.
His performances were at a high level.
He made Manchester City, the best team in England in 2013 look ordinary and again in 2015 without scoring he was a level above everyone on the pitch.
This year vs Arsenal I will concede that his overall performance was not on any of those levels. He just looked lackadaisical tbh. What Italian teams has he struggled against bar Inter? AC Milan he was still creating chances for his team.
When I say great footballers, I'm talking about players that affect more than one phase of play.
RVN is probably the best finisher we have ever had and in fact I think people underestimate his technical qualities but when Ronaldo joined the team, you can see his contribution to United dried up simply because he wasn't scoring as Ronaldo wasn't crossing to him regularly as David Beckham did and he complained. Like any #9 he needs service to be effective but his overall contribution to the team play was lacking. That is what I meant. Marco van Basten is the best stiker we have ever had because he could help the team even when he wasn't scoring.
Ronaldo is the same at the moment. Great goal scorer but needs the team to create chances for him to affect the game. Obviously it is harder for Madrid to create against stronger teams so his contributuon suffers as he doesnt really get invlived in the build up phase. Btw what do you think of Agueros finishing? I think he has one of the best finishing techniques in Europe atm
Forgive me I am typing in a hurry. He was the best in 70s. I was actually thinking of Ronaldo and Rivaldo in 02.
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You're taking the meaning of the word "objectively" way too literally. We can state -- objectively -- that Kate Upton is a much more beautiful woman that Angela Merkel, even though we can agree that beauty is a subjective, not objective, quality.
Assessing the greatness of an athlete, at least footballers and other players of team sports, versus another isn't anything like running a scientific experiment in a lab where the rules of controlling for variables are critical for replication and establishing reliability of the hypothesis. In football, you do look at stats of course but you also watch how they played the game.
It's not at all difficult to come to a firm conclusion that Pele, Maradona and Messi are among the greatest footballers who have ever played the game. We all watched them play (at least those of old enough to have seen them play live) and we were all in awe of what they did, how often they did and who they did it against. We can all say with absolutely confidence -- objectively -- that all three of those players were greater than, say, Jamie Vardy. Under your analysis, apart from cataloguing awards it would be impossible to conclude that Pele and Maradona were greater than Vardy because they played in different era, but of course that's rubbish. Pele and Maradona scored gobs and gobs of goals for both club and country for a long time and hauled in multiple trophies and awards, but even if you ignored their accomplishments all you have to do is watch how they played the game and compare them to how Vardy plays the game. Vardy is a fine footballer, but no one on earth would ever argue that Vardy is right up there with Pele and Maradona or that because Pele and Maradona played in different era that we can't objectively state that either were better than Vardy.
We have to get the notion out of heads that we can't possibly compare players across different eras. The ball argument, the medicine argument, the nutrition argument, the compensation argument and next it's going to be the global warming argument are all pointless rationalizations to avoid confronting the question head on. One can reasonably conclude that Pele is greater than Messi or that Maradona is greater than Pele or that Messi or greater than both or that Eusebio or Ronaldo are greater than all three, but it's not at all impossible to state with reasonable conviction that one is greater than the others despite having played in a different era.
As for the HGH Messi took as a child, that's true but a completely irrelevant point. Had Messi never taken HGH he may never have developed physically enough to become a professional footballer. Had Pele's father brutalized his son instead of teaching him how to play the game, he may have runaway from his family and never had pursued football. Had Maradona been born to a rich family he may have become a lawyer, not a footballer. We can only judge footballers on the basis of their ability on their pitch, not the circumstances of their childhood and whatever medical treatment they received or didn't receive as children. Pele, Maradona and Messi played the game and they played the game brilliantly and on that basis can form judgments about how well they played the game. Some might say that all three are equally brilliant and others might rank them in some order, even if the difference of greatness between those three is very slim. Either way, it's quite possible to form judgments about the relative greatness of those three (and others, such as Cruyff or whoever), even if they played in different eras.
No, that's your mistake. Beauty is actually an objective thing, it's about symmetry, proportions, etc. It's actually can be easily checked on a computer that as you know simply does not possess any subjectivity in principle and can generate faces that would be considered beautiful.
No, you just try to pass of clearly subjective thing as an objective one. What you are talking about is a subjective judgement with arguments. It's a different thing. And objective statement can only be verified via proving the hypothesis, so it's exactly like running a scientific experiment. Football and the "play" can be broken down to simple success/fail or what is more commonly known in a game theory as 0/1 parts. It's just very, very hard. Near impossible.
Well i severely doubt anybody here has actually seen Pele play as much as Messi. Even just a lot. Which is your other problem if you want to talk about an objective decision. Actually it's definition of subjective. You base your assessment of Messi and Pele on your personal experience, not real facts and you allow your perception to guide your judgement. The fact is you only saw how many, maybe 30 matches of Pele, i think it's a fair approximation, you know almost nothing about how he played outside of his Brazil national team performances, especially in his peak years and you compare that with more that a 200 matches of Messi. Your data sample is simply biased.
Saying something with confidence, arguments etc and saying something objectively is two different things. This is what is called a common belief rather than a proven fact. Sure it can be accurate. But it can also prove incorrect, there was a time when "no one on earth" would think that the planet is orbiting the sun, in fact everybody, well absolute majority, were sure otherwise and they even had arguments (flawed and short-sighted like that Pele matches you are going by) to prove it!
And somebody, a Leicester fan can actually think that Vardy is better than Messi. It will be a subjective thing of course and probably emotional and biased as well, but not completely devoid of reason and argument. The most difficult thing is in many cases is to assign a weight to these arguments. That is essentially a defining moment. Just read this thread, about half of people do not agree that Messi is the greatest of all time. Bummer. And many of them are citing Messi's failure at WC as a reason. Scientifically speaking they are assigning a very big, much bigger than you for example, weight to the "winning the World Cup" criteria. But why? The fact is that both you or someone else assign these weight not based on research or objective factors, but rather your personal feeling, perception. That is called "bias" and it's the reason why such judgments are subjective.
However some of these subjective assessments have majority on board, lets say 99%. That does not make them the fact or proven right, but it does make them much more likely to be proven right than wrong. It's a matter of probability. But it's the cases you cite, when there is too much of gap. When i was writing my post earlier i was guilty of oversimplifying things and so i made a mistake as well. The thing is of course comparing players in different times is not "impossible" in principle it just requires a very-very huge amount of time and resources. So it makes it approximately "impossible". But of course that is when you compare players of similar stature. If you compare a nothing player with a real star than even without a proper experiment you can conclude the result, because you understand that no matter what sort of weights you'd use unless you employ an extreme bias like Leicester fan saying that Messi or Pele would not be able to win Premier League title with team that was on the brink of relegation a year before and so Vardy is better it's impossible to overcome such a huge gap. But as soon as you move from Vardy vs Messi to Pele Vs Messi or even Iniesta Vs Messi it all crumbles because in these cases the difference between Messi and them are so low that your biases are effectively changing the outcome. That's why many people in this thread do not support the "Messi is the greatest player ever" statement. Different biases.
You said it yourself.
In football, you do look at stats of course but you also watch how they played the game.
And surely you agree that athletics, modern medicine, ball etc changed the way the game played. I think you don't realize the most important thing. If we look at how Messi is playing right now and we look at how football was played in 50-60s we cannot say that there was not a footballer who could play like Messi back then because they all were worse than Messi, not as skilled. It's just nobody could play as Messi because everything from balls to training methods were completely different and ultimately not as evolved, developed. Just look at the athletic data, the Men's 100 meters world record progression for example.
But one is a medical treatment that improves physique and attributes directly linked to playing football and the others are just baseless conjectures like if Messi died as a child he would not become great. Of course he would not. The main point is Messi was allowed to take this HGH by modern science, that simply was not available for Pele. It's not just the HGH thing, it's the whole sports medicine. If players in 60s had the same treatments as current ones, it's a safe bet, it's actually an objective fact they would have performed much better.
Of course judgments (opinions) are possible, just not the objective ones.
@Vilev wrote:
No, that's your mistake. Beauty is actually an objective thing, it's about symmetry, proportions, etc. It's actually can be easily checked on a computer that as you know simply does not possess any subjectivity in principle and can generate faces that would be considered beautiful.
Rubbish. Beauty is not objective in any sense of the word. It is inherently subjective, but it is real nonetheless. Reasonable minds can differ on who between Kate Upton and Giselle Bundschen is more "beautiful". Beauty cannot be measured or analyzed scientifically to allow one to conclude, scientifically, that Kate or Giselle is more beautiful than the other.
I will adress the rest of your points in a separate post. Gotta jump on a call right now!
No, that's your mistake. Beauty is actually an objective thing, it's about symmetry, proportions, etc. It's actually can be easily checked on a computer that as you know simply does not possess any subjectivity in principle and can generate faces that would be considered beautiful.
Rubbish. Beauty is not objective in any sense of the word. It is inherently subjective, but it is real nonetheless. Reasonable minds can differ on who between Kate Upton and Giselle Bundschen is more "beautiful". Beauty cannot be measured or analyzed scientifically to allow one to conclude, scientifically, that Kate or Giselle is more beautiful than the other.
I will adress the rest of your points in a separate post. Gotta jump on a call right now!
Ronaldo is better.
Hold on, you do realise Messi got HGH due to deficiency in GH? He got the treatment because healthy individuals grow normally whereas he didn't, hence he got the GH he needed to grow. Even with treatment he is still below average weight and build. This shouldn't even be a point of contention.
It's your view that he was very good against some English sides and that he demolished the other. You haven't got many tangibles to prove it. In my view, he was anonymous in quite a lot of games where the opposition had a strong defensive organisation. Chelsea most of the time, United in 2008, even Arsenal in 2011. It took him 11 games to score his first against English sides and that was a penalty, I think. In his first seven games against Italian clubs, he scored one goal, again a penalty, his opponents being Udinese, Inter and AC Milan. Messi is a fantastic player, but he benefited hugely from UEFA creating its little elitist money club where basically there are six or seven clubs being much stronger than the other and the gulf in quality has enabled both him and Ronaldo to post ridiculous and unrealistic numbers, in La Liga in particular. Also, it's fair to say that the top English clubs and Italian clubs in general have regressed in the past three or four years enabling him to up his poor numbers from previous five or six years. When he is in a more 'realistic' surroundings, such as the Argentina national team which has four or five good players and is faced against teams of similar quality on a regular basis, his contribution is more modest, particularly in big games where he doesn't quite make the mark. People talk about the WC, but he wasn't anywhere near his usual level in my opinion and his title of the best player was more of a PR stunt than anything else. Even he knew it.
IDK why you guys are mistreating my point. I have been very clear. There is no objective way to compare midfielders and strikers, but people's perception of Zidane is increasing and that of Ronaldo is decreasing. (esp due to Messi's records)
This. Both beautiful than average joe, but preference for one over other is preference.
You've been clear to illustrate your idiotic point. Zidane as a player and Zidane as a manager are two different things.
Zidane could win a treble for the next 5 years in a row and it doesn't change the fact he's not the best player of his generation.
You're either an utter moron or a troll.
Messi has a talent to play football we can all agree absolute world class and the best in the world atm, Ronnie is a very close second imo. But also imo, Diego Maradona, is the best ever won the world cup on his own, almost won a second, (drugs aside) Messi has never reached Maradona's standards on a world level. Messi has a superb team of players around him at barca and the results have reflected that.
why? so because he prefers a certain player to another it makes him right? He has never coached Messi and has no allegeance to him so why would he say he is better?
He didnt win the world cup on his own. What a load of rubbish.
Since when was football an individual sport?Let's at least wait till it all plays out. Both still have years to go and competitions to play for.
The point here (that I am trying to make at least) is that if someone think Ronaldo is better, they shouldn't be responded with "
". It's a close debate. I personally prefer Ronaldo but to all those that think Messi is better I don't ridicule them because who knows maybe they are right!Would be quite incredible if there comes a player better than Messi.
I do think he's peaked though.
2010-2011 was his best season and he was in peak physical form.
I do think he's peaked though.
2010-2011 was his best season and he was in peak physical form.
Ronaldo in recent years has been better IMO.