lol. It's exactly the other way around. you're trying to inflate Maradona's achievements with Argentina using the 1986 world cup to suggest that the gap between them is bigger than it is, when in reality you have nothing else to add.
- Messi took Argentina to the Copa America final. Maradona never did that.
- Messi was more influential in taking Argentina to the 2014 final than Maradona in 1990 (and you see people here even trying to give Maradona the credit for taking Argentina to the final when it's utter non-sense. Argentina had a great team that actually won the Copa America comfortably one year later without Maradona).
- Messi won an Olympic gold medal with Argentina (even though it's not Maradona's fault that he doesn't have one)
- Messi already scored more goals for Argentina than Maradona (1986 included).
- Maradona has done absolutely nothing else with Argentina that Messi didn't match or surpass.
I don't know what problem you have with the hard fact that Maradona's impressive international career/success was all about the 1986 World Cup. I also don't know why this fact immediately strikes a nerve with the Maradona fanboys (the wise kind of fanboys), that they immediately attack the poster, rather than refute the facts in it.
Would you say the same about Maradona in the 1986 world cup final?
Eh? You misunderstand. Maradona's 1986 is widely seen as one of, if not thé, best individual performances in international football -- of course it's what makes almost all of the difference! It's also not something that Messi has ever come close to replicating (you could perhaps compare the first four games with 2014, but after that at QF and SF stage there is very little comparison). Like I said, if you take away Messi's 2014 his résumé with the NT suddenly doesn't look very "all-timey", wouldn't you agree?
Messi's 2014 and Maradona's 1990 are very similar in a lot of ways. Neither in top form or shape (both coming off of injury lay-offs if I remember correctly?) and missing a lot of team mates in the latter stages or Final (Di María, Agüero to injury; Caniggia, Olarticoechea to injury & Giusti to suspension). Both of them the main creative element in very defensively-minded teams, unable to really impose themselves in the latter stages save for some moments (cf. Maradona's assist v Brazil and Messi's v Switzerland, very similar again). I agree with you that Messi was probably better and certainly more influential (Maradona even missed a pk in a shoot-out, the real hero twice in a row being Goycochea).
Messi has been better in the Copa América than Maradona, I agree. But the biggest point of difference is still the WC and especially the opponents and big moments.
Messi's opponents in the WC:
- Serbia & Montenegro,
1 goal + 1 assist (as a sub)
- Netherlands
- Mexico (as a sub)
- Nigeria
- South Korea
- Greece
- Mexico,
1 assist
- Germany
- Bosnia-Herzegovina,
1 goal
- Iran,
1 goal
- Nigeria,
2 goals
- Switzerland,
1 assist
- Belgium
- Netherlands, scored in pen. shoot-out
- Germany
Maradona's opponents in the WC:
- Belgium
- Hungary,
2 goals
- El Salvador
- Italy
- Brazil, sent off
- South Korea,
3 assists
- Italy,
1 goal
- Bulgaria,
1 assist
- Uruguay
- England,
2 goals
- Belgium,
2 goals
- West-Germany,
1 assist
- Cameroon
- USSR
- Romania,
1 assist
- Brazil,
1 assist
- Yugoslavia, missed in pen. shoot-out
- Italy, scored in pen. shoot-out
- West-Germany
- Greece,
1 goal
- Nigeria,
1 assist
The calibre of opponents is less impressive in Messi's case if you ask me.
You'd expect Messi to score more than Maradona (based on what we've seen from their club careers + the differences in era's), but even if he didn't I wouldn't hold it against him that much as he's always played a diff. role for the NT than at Barça -- however, when like in the latter stages of 2010 & 2014 WC and in this Copa (except for the Paraguay game really) he also fails to provide as a playmaker then that is a far bigger issue than simply not scoring, in my opinion.
Re: Maradona's 1986 final. Yes, I would say that. But he also gets a lot more leeway because of what he did in the previous two games, unlike Messi. Not only that, he did still provide the game-winning pass. That said, Messi's final was actually pretty good (for me his 3rd best game that WC, after Switzerland and Nigeria) and not much different to Maradona's I thought.
-- in summary, if we take away 1986 from Maradona then sure I guess you could claim his NT career doesn't differ that much from Messi's or is even inferior; I don't really see how that means anything though, as when you take away 2014 from Messi his NT career doesn't amount to much on an all-time level even... If you want to claim double-standards, it might be helpful to not employ them yourself?