You're posting that on the back of team based achivements.
And no CR7's peak isn't better than Maradona. It's probably not even a top 5 peak in football much less better than someone who likely had the best peak in football.
Besides running faster and jumping higher, there's probably nothing Ronaldo does better than Maradona on the field.
I'll reply to you only and ignore the other useless replies.
"You're posting that on the back of team based achivements"
I'm not, I'm posting on the back of relative domination, All things considered. Maradona wasn't as dominant as Cristiano was, In fact, There are serious arguments to be made that Maradona got outperformed by his own teammate, Bagni, For a considerable amount of time during Maradona's PRIME. Something like this could never happen to Prime Cristiano, During the early-mid 2010s he provided generational all round performances every single season and it was inconceivable not only that a teammate could outperform him for the duration of league season, But *any player in europe not named Leo Messi* could come close, With Maradona this definitely wasn't the case. Some arguments you might make:
-Napoli wasn't as good as Madrid
-Serie A was harder
-Maradona improved Napoli more than Ronaldo improved Madrid
-Eye test
1.Yes, But if you make that argument you should make the argument in favour of Cristiano playing for Portugal, The only ATG player that had to face teams above his NT ELO ratings on consistent basis, Based on difficulty level an argument could be made that for Cristiano to perform against Sweden/Czech Republic etc was as hard as it was for Maradona to perform against Germany, Italy or Brazil. Also, Madrid wasn't a european powerhouse circa 2008-2009, It was a dark era in the club, Full of managers rotation, Inefficient transfers and overall failure on the european stage.
2.Seria A golden era only started during the very late 80s, Period in which Maradona declined athletically. According to ELO ranking it was the 3rd best league in the world when prime Maradona was active, In Cristiano case he played in the best league in the world *In every single season during his prime*, Add that to the difficulty considerations too.
3.Questionable at best, Cristiano raised the floor significantly, Increased the goal output of Madrid by over 50%, Increased LaLiga points tally by almost 20-30% on average and on the contribution in the Champions League i shouldn't even elaborate, Cristiano surpassed Maradona's international club career by the time he was 24.
4.Maradona played the beautiful game as good as any, But that's a very subjective take, And in order to even have the possibility of a discussion we must account of "eye test" as a component rather than a decider, Even if you strongly dislike Cristiano playstyle (Something that hundreds of millions of fans and footballers who modelled their game after him will strongly disagree).
On prime/peak, What do you consider Maradona prime and peak and how could they stand against 2010-2014 Cristiano? In terms of performance, stats, impact, influence and overall capabilities as a player? To me no stretch of 5 seasons is equal to what Cristiano produced during the early 2010s, Peak is more debatable, Especially from pure ability perspective, But if we account all the things that make a player great (Or a season), The things i listed above, I doubt Maradona best season or two can match Cristiano best. And can you list the other 5 peaks you consider better? Which players were able to combined ATG level goalscoring+assist output, Be the most decisive player itw and combine it with elite build-up and wing (Or 10) play? Messi and Pele are the only ones i can think of, Cruyff is a possibility for one season only (1973/74). For the rest you'll have a very hard time providing a reasonable argument.
Maradona is the most flawed ATG, The only one that we need to redefine how we approach that discussions to begin with, It could be because his natural talent was the best we've ever seen and we need to rationalize everything around it, But it could be because people are caught up in certain narratives that barely had any connection with how history really unfolded. I guarantee you that if people made a rigorous assessment of Maradona's career as much as they do with Cristiano (Or Messi) his narrative as "permanent top 2-4 ATG" will weaken significantly.
Trying to be fair Messi,Maradona and pele definitely had better peaks.
Same could be said about the rotund Brazilian and cryuff, zico, platini and possibly Beckenbauer, Muller and van Basten.
I have no idea how good di estefano or puskas were so I left them out.
All in all 5 players definitely had better peaks than him, the number could rise but it becomes a bit subjective, what pushes Ronaldo over the edge in all time rankings is his longevity and his clutchness, the latter he developed at Madrid.
The
Muller and MVB were nowhere near peak Cristiano level, This is outrageous take.
Beckenbauer is invalid comparison.
Platini wasn't as capable player as Cristiano. Zico was a very capable player but he played his best years in south america, The level of competition was way way lower (He also was notorious statpadder against the worst teams in Brazil).
Brazilian Ronaldo was not on peak Cristiano level, I elaborated on that months ago and have no interest in continuing that discussion again. But that one isn't that absurd of a take so fair enough.
Di Stefano and Puskas played in 3.5 GPG era, Both numbers peaked when they were in their deep 30s so that should tell you something about the difficulty level.
Cruyff and Maradona are debatable, I can make a better case for Cruyff than Maradona to be honest.
I like this strategy
