Lionel Messi | PSG Watch

feck off with your goats and just enjoy it. Jesus Christ.
 
altodevil said:
feck off with your goats and just enjoy it. Jesus Christ.
Click to expand...

Unless you’re a goat herder, I completely agree!

I watched Maradona in 1986, and it was an extatic experience for a kid. I saw him prematurely overaged yet delivering sublime opening passes in 1994 until he was caught for his desperate and deranged doping attempt, and it was artistry. Now I’am a grown man and take great pleasure seeing Messi transform his previously explosive and magnificent skills into dark arts. Cruyff, Maradona, Messi - we are just lucky to behold such craft at times, when the forces of history comes together in particular ways.

It’s also been great watching Modric this championship, btw.
 
Good for him if we wins the WC. Not too hung up on the goat stuff like others here but seems like he gets a total pass for endorsing the Saudi state?
 
He's just a joy to watch. This world cup, he has been superhuman. I honestly didn't think he still had it in him, but he can do whatever he wants on that pitch.

Feck the goat debate, i just want to enjoy watching him until he retires.
 
does anyone remember how CR fans used to say in that other thread that such goals are just matter of "style and aesthetics"? :lol: like it's something you can actually choose as your playing style or switch on/off when you like. in fact, it was always a matter of ability. such goals simply don't happen if player don't have individual quality to force it upon defenders. same story vs Boateng/Bayern and countless others goals. no, it doesn't just look better than your average tap in or penalty - it actually requires more skill to pull it off. Messi always had that over Ronnie.
 
Messi has achieved his final form: and it's actually Maradona
 
Brwned said:
It’s not a lot of games but if you watch Pele’s World Cup performances you can see him over a 12 year period, from 18 to 30, at the highest level. Highs and lows, from all-time great goals in the final to being kicked out of the tournament. I think you’d find it difficult to argue it paints an unrepresentative picture of him if you watched it yourself and lined it up with how he’s described in written reports at the time. It definitely doesn’t give you a one dimensional perspective covered in gloss.

It’s obviously true that unless you lived in São Paulo you saw less of Pele than the average football fan has seen of Messi over the last decade. That‘s true of the people who watched Pele live in the 60s, just for those moments in the World Cup, and came away thinking it’s the greatest player they’ve ever seen. It’s true for people who watched Maradona in the 80s and chose him as their hero.

Those judgments were based on incomplete information but I don’t think you should discard them. I don’t think you need to see that much of Messi to think he’s unbelievably good. Very casual footballs that only watch some of the World Cup games and some of the CL knockout games can see that. I think that’s true for people watching Pele, Maradona and many others back in the day.

You can’t be sure their views are that reliable. But then that’s not really what it’s about, is it? When people say Messi’s the best ever, most of the time it’s not a carefully weighted opinion based on thorough analysis. It’s an emotive thing. Same thing with people in the 80s saying Maradona was the best ever, di Stefano doesn’t come close. It’s mostly just a celebration and recognition of the joy they’ve brought them, and how it’s unparalleled.
Click to expand...

And if your only impression of prime Messi was watching his World Cup performances, do you think you’d get an accurate impression of his quality? Of course you wouldn’t. In fact, you’d probably come away thinking Miroslav Klose was the greatest striker of his generation!

I do agree with the general gist of your post. Opinions on all of these players are massively subjective and biased. My point is that when so many people from the current era are convinced that Messi is head and shoulders the best player on the planet that’s based on hundreds (thousands?) of hours of watching him and all of his rivals for the crown. Watching their good performances and bad performances. Which was never the case 40 or 50 years ago.

And what’s even more weird to me is young football fans staying with absolute certainty that a player who they’ve only ever watched in a handful of 90 minute matches (recorded and repeated for posterity because they were such great performances) and a bunch of highlight reels in hagiographic documentaries is definitely a better player than Messi. That just makes no sense.

It comes back to what @kouroux said. Messi is the best footballer I’ve ever watched play the game. During my lifetime watching football. And that’s the only opinion on the greatest player of all time I can hold with any certainty.
 
Trex said:
Well Modric can kiss his relationship with Ronaldo goodbye. In all honesty anyone who understand how the game is played and isn't wearing tinted glass knows Messi is the goat.
Click to expand...
I’m probably pulling this out of thin air but I’d guess there’s a fair few of Ronaldo’s ex teammates who might not “care” as much for him as we might think. They’d put up with his behavior (not celebrating teammates goals etc) for a while because of how good he was on the pitch but isn’t it Ronaldo who basically didn’t show up for Modric’s Balon d’Or win because he was furious he didn’t get it? Unless I’m making that up. And they were playing together for years.
 
Santoryo said:
Messi has to win this world cup to cement his GOAT status. Just getting there isn't enough. We can all sit here and say it's a team sport and a lot also depend on his teammate but Messi is special enough to will his team to victory against a superior team. No one said it was going to be easy which is why being seen unanimously as the GOAT isn't easy.

Messi just need Argentina to do their job defensively, hold France for him and give him enough to produce magic to carry them to a World cup.
Click to expand...
Yeah even though I don’t particularly agree with the notion but I do understand it when he’s compared to Diego/Pele. Though he’s been sublime up to this point. I just fear they ship 3 against a fired up Mbappe and France and there’s basically nothing anyone can do against that, no matter how good. But Argentina deserves more credit than that. They’ve been defensively fairly solid all tournament, since Saudi. Though the French seems to have the things that can hurt them: Girouds height up top and devastating pace out wide.
 
Ish said:
I’m probably pulling this out of thin air but I’d guess there’s a fair few of Ronaldo’s ex teammates who might not “care” as much for him as we might think. They’d put up with his behavior (not celebrating teammates goals etc) for a while because of how good he was on the pitch but isn’t it Ronaldo who basically didn’t show up for Modric’s Balon d’Or win because he was furious he didn’t get it? Unless I’m making that up. And they were playing together for years.
Click to expand...
He didn't even congratulate Benzema either
 
About half a page talking about his actual performance. Ten pages talking about what it all means for his GOAT status. Yaaawn.
 
If he wins this, and has a decent season for Paris, it's his.

The final determines who gets it as he shares the same team with his main rival, nothing Mbappe could do at club level will eclipse this .

Gotta suck if you're Mbappe to be honest.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
And if your only impression of prime Messi was watching his World Cup performances, do you think you’d get an accurate impression of his quality? Of course you wouldn’t. In fact, you’d probably come away thinking Miroslav Klose was the greatest striker of his generation!

I do agree with the general gist of your post. Opinions on all of these players are massively subjective and biased. My point is that when so many people from the current era are convinced that Messi is head and shoulders the best player on the planet that’s based on hundreds (thousands?) of hours of watching him and all of his rivals for the crown. Watching their good performances and bad performances. Which was never the case 40 or 50 years ago.

And what’s even more weird to me is young football fans staying with absolute certainty that a player who they’ve only ever watched in a handful of 90 minute matches (recorded and repeated for posterity because they were such great performances) and a bunch of highlight reels in hagiographic documentaries is definitely a better player than Messi. That just makes no sense.

It comes back to what @kouroux said. Messi is the best footballer I’ve ever watched play the game. During my lifetime watching football. And that’s the only opinion on the greatest player of all time I can hold with any certainty.
Click to expand...

You’re also saying things with certainty that aren’t true, though. Like the idea that young football fans are only making judgments based on games that were recorded for posterity because they were such great performances. Brazil against Bulgaria in 1966 was not a great performance. It wasn’t this glossy recording of a career highlight. You can watch games of great players when they weren’t great. Some people have.

I do think if you just watched Messi in the World Cup you would be able to see he’s on a different level to his peers. You wouldn’t see him at his absolute best - you’d know that by looking at his record and seeing he was more prolific with a better team in a different role - but you can see that he can do things no-one else on the pitch can do, and that all his team-mates deferred to him in important moments. This is a team that can get to the final on the biggest stage, and it’s clear that one of their tactics is “just get the ball to Messi”. It’s one of the things the stands out really clearly with the greats; the deference to them. And he came up with spectacular moments like the goals against Bosnia, Iran and Nigeria, the assist against Switzerland, and bundles of chances. I’m sure his 2014 World Cup will be looked back on differently if he wins this time.

I just don’t agree that you need to have complete information to make a reasonable judgment. You’re still making subjective and biased judgments now, based on incomplete information. You have more information, sure, but there’s always someone that has more information than you. Should we only listen to the opinions of people who’ve watched Messi live in hundreds of games? I think you can make reasonable judgments from a relatively small sample of games over a long period, assuming it’s a representative sample in a variety of situations. I think you’d be surprised how much you can see from just watching someone like Pele at the World Cup.
 
The thing that for me separates Messi from every other player that I have seen is that his strengths are the basics of Football, from the point of view of an attacking player, he does everything better than the rest. The simplicity of his game is mesmerizing especially when you consider that he is a perfectly balanced blend between creator and goalscorer.
 
Unbelievable how he's still playing at the level he is.

Definitely the best player I've ever seen.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
So crazy that those two tweets are almost 11 years apart. That’s something else that sets Messi apart. He became the very best so young and maintained that status for so long.
Click to expand...

There's a thread on here somewhere from 2006 asking whether he'd end up as the GOAT.
 
Listening to Piers Morgan trying to make the case for Ronaldo as GOAT, bringing nonsensical arguments you'd expect from Ronaldo PR teams and those who suck him off in the media. Dude literally said Messi has had to play with world class players surrounding him at Barcelona his whole career while Ronaldo had to do it with nothing around. What the hell is wrong with idiots like these? Ronaldo has literally played with multiple Ballon D'or winners surrounding him for feck sakes.

The nerve to pretend that Ronaldo didn't play in a stacked Real Madrid team surrounded by elites of the elites at their craft is incredibly astounding :lol:

Imagine you're Benzema, Modric, Kroos, Casemiro, etc, listening to these PR7 fanboys in the media dismissing you to hype their boy.
 
Last edited:
Santoryo said:
Listening to Piers Morgan trying to make the case for Ronaldo as GOAT, bringing nonsensical arguments you'd expect from Ronaldo PR teams and those who suck him off in the media. Dude literally said Messi has had to play with world class players surrounding him at Barcelona his whole career while Ronaldo had to do it with nothing around. What the hell is wrong with idiots like these? Ronaldo has played with multiple Ballon D'or winners surrounding him.

The nerve to pretend that Ronaldo didn't play in a stacked Real Madrid team surrounded by elites of the elites at their craft is incredibly astounding :lol:

Imagine you're Benzema, Modric, Kroos, Casemiro, etc, listening to these PR7 fanboys in the media dismissing you to hype their boy.
Click to expand...

It really has been a terrible year for these Ronaldo arguments as Modric, Casemiro and Benzema won the CL without him. Surrounded by nothing… except players that won anyway on their own merit.
 
Whoever wins the WC between Mbappe or Messi is getting the Ballon D'Or.

Messi potentially winning his 8th would be incredible.
 
Ish said:
I’m probably pulling this out of thin air but I’d guess there’s a fair few of Ronaldo’s ex teammates who might not “care” as much for him as we might think. They’d put up with his behavior (not celebrating teammates goals etc) for a while because of how good he was on the pitch but isn’t it Ronaldo who basically didn’t show up for Modric’s Balon d’Or win because he was furious he didn’t get it? Unless I’m making that up. And they were playing together for years.
Click to expand...
Messi has teammates who would go to war for him, imagine being Alvarez having Messi conjure up all that brilliance just to have you tap it home surely you'll love him.
Messi always happy to share the limelight, the other dude attempts to steal his teammates goal, I don't care what Bruno would say publicly but such behaviour is only going to bring about resentment.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.