Greatest individual performances ever

Messi v Real Zaragoza in 2010. Not a big game but I actually think it might be the best performance that I've ever seen by any player in any game ever. It seemed like every time he got the ball, he could do literally anything he wanted. Insanity.
 
Beckham v Greece has only been mentioned once I think.

This is the one really for me, because the rest of the team had more or less given up. He was doing it all by himself at times. It was a performance that stands out as not just being a good individual performance, but a man who dragged a team to a result pretty much single handed.
 
Nogbadthebad said:
Beckham v Greece has only been mentioned once I think.

This is the one really for me, because the rest of the team had more or less given up. He was doing it all by himself at times. It was a performance that stands out as not just being a good individual performance, but a man who dragged a team to a result pretty much single handed.
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If I remember correctly we were piss-poor in that game. Not to hijack the thread but we had a pretty talented team individually, and they just couldn’t gel. Which is why I think those saying that Southgate should get no credit for a final and a semi final to be ridiculous. We’ve had about 5 golden generations of English football and Southgate is only beaten by the ‘66 squad.
 
Winrar said:
Lewandowski 5 goals in 9 minutes
Arshavin 4-4
Bale hat trick vs Inter
De Gea 14 saves vs Arsenal
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This really was utterly insane. It’s vanishingly rare at any level of the game. At that level it’s ridiculous.
 
Demyanenko_square_jaw said:
I'd rather watch Diego as well (and rate his tournament slightly higher overall too), Cruyff was an extremely smooth player, but didn't quite have the same imaginative, improvisatory flair or ability to dribble/pass in the tightest of spaces. However it's close enough performance to rightfully avoid falling victim to the "nobody ever came close" or "he was levels below" sort of schtick that happens too often in these discussions.
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I get your point and I share it specially regarding comparisons between legends carreers or mere talent, hiperboles regarding certain fellas and their comparisons sound to the very least silly.

Yet I do think in terms of specific perfomances (of a match or like in this case of an entire CUP or tournament) Diego's '86 was a CLEAR NOTCH above most KO Tournaments perfomances (specially WCs), even regarding Johan's '74. In fact it was a notch above his very own perfomances too.

And I do not say this mostly based on an aesthetic point of view, but even in the share volume of plays (there are even more than 10 minutes versions of just that Belgium game alone, pulling stuff by the second constantly). While taking in account the difficulty of the majority of those plays, his character, the various roles & tasks he played, in other words he played like a ball of fire with a cold killer instict the whole thing while being Maradona doing "Maradona things". There was no box without a tick, it was very special even among those very special unique players best perfomances.
On the other hand I totally get that there is no such thing as a 10 times better perfomance than Pele, Jairzinho, Didi, Messi, Johan, Baggio, Romario, Kempes, Franz and so on, yet Mane's 62 is the one that I feel really closer, yet this last one without the variety of tasks Diego did and his team needed from him.
 
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