I like Marcos's input in these debates because he's actually Argentinean, watched both players and is in a good position to bust some of the various Maradona myths that have come to light during the years. Even I wasn't aware of some of them until recently, like Napoli spending big at the time, my memory is hazy as I was very young but obviously much like the 86 Argentina side people like to talk about Napoli like they were a pub team too.
The big question here is... Marco's age! I saw Maradona play in Italy I even saw Maradona play and tie with Sporting in 89 (good times)
Well regardless of Marcos' age, if you use the criteria of Argentines who have seen both players, then Maradona wins by an enormous margin.
Speaking of ages and why this is such an important factor in making judgments, in my mind there are a few things that the younger generation on here should understand about how football has changed since the Maradona era:
1. In the 1980's and early 1990's, the world's most important/interesting league was the Italian Serie A. During this time period, it became the league where the world's top stars played.
2. Despite the fact that the top stars played there, each team had a limit of 3 foreign players on the field at any time. And by foreign, this is pre-EU days so foreign meant any non-Italian. So a Spaniard or Frenchman counted as a foreign player. So every team was basically Italians and 3 top stars - the better the team, the bigger the stars, so for instance late 80's Milan had the famous trio of Gullit, van Basten and Rijkjaard alongside some of the best Italian players of the period, which is why Milan was a dominant team in that era.
3. Because of the above foreign player limitations, it was possible for a team like Milan to dominate and be successful in domestic and international competitions, but there was a limit to how dominant they could be, because they could not buy all the players money could afford like today's top clubs can. Napoli also had their 3 foreigners, Maradona and the Brazilians Careca and Alemao. 4. At the time, Real Madrid and Barcelona were also two of the best clubs in the world, however, they were great mostly due to the fact that they monopolized the top Spanish players, and they bought selected top foreign stars. So while they were great, they did not dominate the game the way they do today.
5. Italy on the other hand was more divided in terms of the top Italian players, you had top Italians playing on Inter, Milan, Juventus, Napoli, Fiorentina, Sampdoria and others.
6. Squads in the other big leagues and big clubs in England, Germany, France and Portugal were predominantly domestic players.
7. The Champions' League didn't exist back then. Instead it was the European Cup, it was a home and away knock-out competition, and only the actual champion of each European league was invited. So unlike today where the big clubs are in the Champions' League every year, back then even a great player like Maradona only played in the European Cup twice.
The point of all this is basically that in the 1980's and early 1990's, the club game was significantly more balanced in terms of talent. The best clubs were only marginally better than the rest because they were able to 1) concentrate the domestic talent, and 2) acquire selected foreign stars. Also, there were less continental matches to play. Therefore trying to argue that Messi is better than Maradona because he won more Champions' Leagues and scored more goals and assists with Barcelona is apples and oranges. Maradona's Barcelona had some of the best Spanish players (at a time when the Spanish national team was not great), whereas Messi's Barcelona has players that can be regarded as the world's best in every single position. Maradona's Napoli just had probably 1 or 2 members of the Italian national team (I can't remember which ones, if any).
The control to this experiment is the international game, in which the balance of power cannot be as easily shifted by money. And this is where the massive differences in the club game that resulted from the Bosman ruling, the abolition of the foreign player limitation rule, and the globalization of the game bringing massive financial clout to the biggest clubs is manifesting itself most clearly. There have always been great players, but today's great players benefit from playing with other great players which makes the comparisons difficult. Messi, for all his greatness, has an arguably better array of companions in Argentina than Maradona ever did, but he cannot stand out and his moments of brilliance are far less frequent with Argentina that they are with Barcelona. That much has become abundantly clear.
