Lionel Messi

[Ruud10]

Has Messi left Maradona in the dust? That's a bold comment to make.

Bold, but true.

There's nothing to take away from Maradona whatsoever. He's more than a mere legend of the game who played not only flair and ability but also productivity and sports a lengthy list of team accomplishments on his resume. A genius with the ball, Maradona should be revered a thousand years from now. And I'm sure he will be.

But, incredibly, just one generation later Argentina has produced an even greater footballer than Maradona.

The hardest notion for most of us to wrap our heads around is that club football has left international football behind in terms of quality -- the notable exception being the ridiculously monotonous, perhaps even negative, play of Chelsea last season. The CL winner is, without any real question, the best football team in the world, year in and year out. Spain right now is fantastic, but does anyone seriously believe Barcelona (yes, Iniesta, Xavi and a few others are on both teams) isn't better than Spain? Or that Man United in 07/08 wasn't better than the Italy 06 side and probably even better than the Spain 08 side? The point is that the World Cup argument really doesn't hold up that well, since the real action in the modern game is club football, and in particular the UEFA Champions League.

Messi is still only 24 and has done what he has done. Maradona produced his magic in the World Cup when he was 26. And, truth be told, Maradona had an outstanding team around him. Valdano and Burruchaga (sp?) were sensational. And in the final against Germany, Matthaus (sp?) effectively dealt with Maradona. Just to make sure I wasn't going senile, I checked wiki and history records that Maradona did not score in the final against Germany. Maradona did produce those two goals against England in the quarterfinal, one of which is immortal. But the other goal was pure cheating, as we all know.

The main argument against Messi is always "Not yet." But that's crap. What Messi has done these last five years Maradona could never do. Did I mention that Messi is still only 24? Look it up. Maradona's best days were in his 20s, which Messi will be stepping into soon. The other argument against Messi is that he's surrounded by more quality than Maradona ever was. That's true, but when you look at HOW Messi scores his goals they're rarely ever tap ins off of perfect crosses or through balls. The vast majority of goals are purely self-made demonstrations of brilliance. Barcelona will hold the ball for minutes at a time, but when Messi gets into a decent position with the ball in the last third, he typically beats three or four defenders. And he does this over and over. 60, 70, 80 goals a season. And now he's on 90 with two games left to play in this calendar year. Madness.

 

[Gio]

Of course, according to a large number of Ronaldo fans, Messi has to win the world cup, which is a pre-requisite of being the GOAT.

I don't think it's just Ronaldo fans who think Messi has to do something special outside of Barcelona if he is to be regarded as the greatest player of all time, rather than 'just' one of the greatest.

every great player was surrounded by other great players

or do you think that pele, cruyff and maradona did it all by themselves?

and before you start talking about maradona and napoli, he won two scudettos in 7 seasons, never made it in the champions and the most goals he scored in one championship was 16 goals

It's not really a fair comparison given that:

• Average goals per game during mid-80s Serie A was 50% less than modern day La Liga.
• Maradona played 28 games when he scored 16 goals. That's less than half of Messi's 68.
• Barcelona have reached unprecedented levels of domestic dominance in a top league. Their typical goal difference is +75 every year and average 70-75% possession every game.

At the same time, Napoli weren't a squad of muppets: Ciro Ferrara and Careca were both top players, while the likes of Alemao and Andrea Carnevale were more than solid.

Therefore given how much the club game has changed in light of the concentration of wealth and quality in handful of elite clubs, the one constant that has remained is international football. Hence why that is used as a cross-generational benchmark of quality.

 

[Marcosdeto]

Most definitely its never a one man show and as you mentioned the current Argentina national team is weaker than the current Barcelona Squad but if you want to be compared to the greats you have to beat their records or match it. He still has time and if he keeps going at the current rate there is not doubt in my mind he will surpass more greats in his career

do you know that brazil, without pele won the 1962 world cup? that holland, without cruyff went to the final against argentina in 1978 and that argentina with a one legged maradona played the final against germany in 1990?

that shows how great the teams that surrounded pele, cruyff and maradona were, that even without them they could reach great levels of football

 

[Spoony]

Good post, Gio.

 

[Proud_Lyon]

I know everyone has their own preference but I would rather have Ronaldo on my team maybe its because I have seen him play more and I followed him before I noticed messi I don't know what it is but I'm not jumping on the Messi band wagon. It has always been Ronaldo for me he may not be as good as Messi (and that is debatable) it's just the way you have your right to love Messi I have my right to Love Ronaldo

Ronaldo is a great player, but his selfishness in shooting on site might have worked last season, but it is not working this season. He needs to realise that he has teammates who are in better positions to score, and each time he misses and they are either drawing 0-0 or losing, that increases the tension in the ranks. I was a supporter of Ronaldo until the moment where Messi dominated us in the Champions League. As far as the debatable is concerned, Messi's overall game is a great deal better than Ronaldo and his team ethic is second to no-one. He is sure of himself and his spatial awareness and ability in the box is second to none, whereas others would have gone down for a certain penalty. Only one thing that peeves me about Ronaldo, and that is when he scores, he expects his teammates to go rushing to him and celebrate, but when Higuain or Benzema or even Ozil score, he is probably the last to go up and celebrate. What is that all about?

 

[Marcosdeto]

I don't think it's just Ronaldo fans who think Messi has to do something special outside of Barcelona if he is to be regarded as the greatest player of all time, rather than 'just' one of the greatest.



It's not really a fair comparison given that:

• Average goals per game during mid-80s Serie A was 50% less than modern day La Liga.
• Maradona played 28 games when he scored 16 goals. That's less than half of Messi's 68.
• Barcelona have reached unprecedented levels of domestic dominance in a top league. Their typical goal difference is +75 every year and average 70-75% possession every game.

At the same time, Napoli weren't a squad of muppets: Ciro Ferrara and Careca were both top players, while the likes of Alemao and Andrea Carnevale were more than solid.

Therefore given how much the club game has changed in light of the concentration of wealth and quality in handful of elite clubs, the one constant that has remained is international football. Hence why that is used as a cross-generational benchmark of quality.

what you said is right, but doesnt prove that maradona's career in napoli was better than messi's in barcelona

btw, careca was another great footballer that played with maradona in napoli

edit: now i see you mentioned careca, my mistake

 

[Gio]

And in the final against Germany, Matthaus (sp?) effectively dealt with Maradona. Just to make sure I wasn't going senile, I checked wiki and history records that Maradona did not score in the final against Germany. Maradona did produce those two goals against England in the quarterfinal, one of which is immortal. But the other goal was pure cheating, as we all know.

Well he did release the defence-splitting through-ball for Burruchaga's 85th-minute winner.

 

[Marcosdeto]

Well he did release the defence-splitting through-ball for Burruchaga's 85th-minute winner.

that was a special moment, it was like an orgasm

 

[Proud_Lyon]

do you know that brazil, without pele won the 1962 world cup? that holland, without cruyff went to the final against argentina in 1978 and that argentina with a one legged maradona played the final against germany in 1990?

that shows how great the teams that surrounded pele, cruyff and maradona were, that even without them they could reach great levels of football

It is called adapting to the situation marcos. The Brazilians were brilliant and they knew that even if Pele wasn't there, they still had that ability, or the belief to win the 62 world cup.

 

[Scarlett Dracarys]

do you know that brazil, without pele won the 1962 world cup? that holland, without cruyff went to the final against argentina in 1978 and that argentina with a one legged maradona played the final against germany in 1990?

that shows how great the teams that surrounded pele, cruyff and maradona were, that without them they reached great levels of football

Maybe these teams had good managers also..I don't know the history I'm just guessing. So what you're saying is the current international squad is preventing Messi from performing on the International stage ?

 

[Spoony]

that was a special moment, it was like an orgasm

Boca > River, Marco.

 

[Spoony]

I know everyone has their own preference but I would rather have Ronaldo on my team maybe its because I have seen him play more and I followed him before I noticed messi I don't know what it is but I'm not jumping on the Messi band wagon. It has always been Ronaldo for me he may not be as good as Messi (and that is debatable) it's just the way you have your right to love Messi I have my right to Love Ronaldo

How is it debatable?

 

[Marcosdeto]

Maybe these teams had good managers also..I don't know the history I'm just guessing. So what you're saying is the current international squad is preventing Messi from performing on the International stage ?

well, you can see how messi did with maradona and how he is doing with sabella

 

[Marcosdeto]

Boca > River, Marco.

that hurt me

 

[Spoony]

that hurt me

Ha. Are River still pursuing to develop their stadium?

 

[Gio]

what you said is right, but doesnt prove that maradona's career in napoli was better than messi's in barcelona

That's right and I couldn't say that one was markedly better than the other, given that it's such a mindfeck to legitimately compare provincial Napoli in a ruthlessly defensive and negative league when top players were dotted all over the shop, with probably the greatest club side of all time in Barcelona in a horrendously lopsided league.

 

[Scarlett Dracarys]

Ronaldo is a great player, but his selfishness in shooting on site might have worked last season, but it is not working this season. He needs to realise that he has teammates who are in better positions to score, and each time he misses and they are either drawing 0-0 or losing, that increases the tension in the ranks. I was a supporter of Ronaldo until the moment where Messi dominated us in the Champions League. As far as the debatable is concerned, Messi's overall game is a great deal better than Ronaldo and his team ethic is second to no-one. He is sure of himself and his spatial awareness and ability in the box is second to none, whereas others would have gone down for a certain penalty. Only one thing that peeves me about Ronaldo, and that is when he scores, he expects his teammates to go rushing to him and celebrate, but when Higuain or Benzema or even Ozil score, he is probably the last to go up and celebrate. What is that all about?

Barcelona dominated United in the 2011 Champion's League and there was no Ronaldo to blame so who's fault was it this time ?

 

[Proud_Lyon]

Maybe these teams had good managers also..I don't know the history I'm just guessing. So what you're saying is the current international squad is preventing Messi from performing on the International stage ?

That is one part of it of course, but a good manager needs to know how to use his best players. It was scandalous how Maradona played Messi in 2010. Now that Sabella is in charge, he is doing wonders by letting Messi do his own thing. Perhaps marcos could confirm this. Messi has changed his game around completely since Sabella became manager and if he had scored against Saudi Arabia, he would have broken another record, but instead equalled Batigoals record of 12 international goals in a year.

Messi's record pre-Maradona reads, played 54 games, scored 15 with a gpg of 0.28. Post-Maradona, played 22 and scored 16 with a gpg of 0.72.

Edit:
@Red Devil: We were simply beaten by a better team, and no, there was no Ronaldo.

 

[Spoony]

That's right and I couldn't say that one was markedly better than the other, given that it's such a mindfeck to legitimately compare provincial Napoli in a ruthlessly defensive and negative league when top players were dotted all over the shop, with probably the greatest club side of all time in Barcelona in a horrendously lopsided league.

Also star players were hacked down by the opposition. Maradona could barely stand up due to the injuries. Van Basten's career was sadly cut short thanks to the same reason... it prompted the likes of Platini to turn the game into a non contact sport.

 

[Proud_Lyon]

well, you can see how messi did with maradona and how he is doing with sabella

This, see my post about Sabella.

 

[Proud_Lyon]

Also star players were hacked down by the opposition. Maradona could barely stand up due to the injuries. Van Basten's career was sadly cut short thanks to the same reason... it prompted the likes of Platini to turn the game into a non contact sport.

Come on Spoony! You have never seen Messi being kicked all over the pitch over 90 minutes then? The amount of fouls he has had to endure, and he still gets less protection that other players simply because of his own honest reputation of wanting to stay on his feet.

 

[Gio]

Come on Spoony! You have never seen Messi being kicked all over the pitch over 90 minutes then? The amount of fouls he has had to endure, and he still gets less protection that other players simply because of his own honest reputation of wanting to stay on his feet.

Yes, but again it doesn't compare with pre-1990s, an era when the first tackle was regarded as a 'free tackle' and one which would today generally merit a straight red card. How many games has Messi missed in the last four years as a result of the treatment dished out by opposition defenders?

 

[Spoony]

Come on Spoony! You have never seen Messi being kicked all over the pitch over 90 minutes then? The amount of fouls he has had to endure, and he still gets less protection that other players simply because of his own honest reputation of wanting to stay on his feet.

No, not to that level, and rightly so. Even the great Brazil 82 the employed Gentile style tactics on Maradona. On a side note, I still can't help but chuckle when recalling Cameroon's GBH on Canigga in 1990. Fun times.

 

[Proud_Lyon]

Yes, but again it doesn't compare with pre-1990s, an era when the first tackle was regarded as a 'free tackle' and one which would today generally merit a straight red card. How many games has Messi missed in the last four years as a result of the treatment dished out by opposition defenders?

Why don't we go further and discuss the treatment of Pele or even George Best while we are at it. Since they were treated to treatment that would have merited in todays game at least 5 match bans. If you can name any other player that is constantly fouled like Messi is today, I'll be glad to hear them, because there are very few if any.

 

[Proud_Lyon]

No, not to that level, and rightly so. Even the great Brazil 82 the employed Gentile style tactics on Maradona. On a side note, I still can't help but chuckle when recalling Cameroon's GBH on Canigga in 1990. Fun times.

I don't even need to search for the clip because it is something that has been stuck in my memory for a very long time...

 

[Spoony]

Why don't we go further and discuss the treatment of Pele or even George Best while we are at it. Since they were treated to treatment that would have merited in todays game at least 5 match bans. If you can name any other player that is constantly fouled like Messi is today, I'll be glad to hear them, because there are very few if any.

No, that's not the point. It's clearly become a game where players like Messi can flourish like never before. That's not a slight on Messi, because he's undoubtedly the greatest in the world, the player of his generation.

 

[Gio]

Why don't we go further and discuss the treatment of Pele or even George Best while we are at it. Since they were treated to treatment that would have merited in todays game at least 5 match bans. If you can name any other player that is constantly fouled like Messi is today, I'll be glad to hear them, because there are very few if any.

Because we're comparing across generations here - nobody apart from Cal? is disputing Messi's position as the best player of this generation.

 

[Scarlett Dracarys]

Come on Spoony! You have never seen Messi being kicked all over the pitch over 90 minutes then? The amount of fouls he has had to endure, and he still gets less protection that other players simply because of his own honest reputation of wanting to stay on his feet.

Yeah he tries his best to stay on his feet and I think this is one of the things that sets him apart from Ronaldo.

 

[Proud_Lyon]

Yeah he tries his best to stay on his feet and I think this is one of the things that sets him apart from Ronaldo.

I think we need to include a large pool of players alongside Ronaldo...

 

[cesc's_mullet]

When I thought Messi would surpass Ronaldo I thought he'd do so through his creativity, he was matching Ronaldo in terms of gpg but you didn't see him outscoring the 42-goal man over the course of a season.



This one's best - from the same man who said all Fabregas can do is pass so he's not very good:

 

[Proud_Lyon]

This is a post from November 2008 on the Caf:

From this quote:

Originally Posted by FranklyVulgar View Post
People have this strange misconception about the effectivness of Messi.

He is a world class tallent, he is extreamly effective be it creating chances, releaving preasure, beating opponents or scoring goals.

Messi is highly productive and highly effective.

So far this season Messi has played 14 games, scored 11 goals and been credited with 8 assists. Also some of those games he came off the bench. He probably has 10 or 11 starts...

But yeah he isn't effective, or productive all he can do is beat defenders for fun...

Came this response:

And with those stats he can lay claim to 'The greatest of all time' tag? Let him play 80-90 games over 2 seasons and have stats like the ones you have have posted and then you can rave about him being the best. At this moment in time i would rather have Ronaldo in my team than Messi. Hell i'd even Torres than Messi.

90 goals in just over 65 games plus another 25+ assists blows that particular quote out of the water. As for the Torres remark, how much is he regretting it now? The newbs were bad but hell, the mains had their fair share too.

 

[Raees]

This is a post from November 2008 on the Caf:

From this quote:



Came this response:



90 goals in just over 65 games plus another 25+ assists blows that particular quote out of the water. As for the Torres remark, how much is he regretting it now? The newbs were bad but hell, the mains had their fair share too.

.. he had a shit username too.

 

[crappycraperson]

This sort of thing always happen. Same was the case with Rooney Ronaldo. Before we signed Rooney for many he was just a fat overhyped English kid. After his first year, many including some respected posters on here claimed Ronaldo was not even in the same league as Rooney and never will be. Even after 2006/7 season, plenty refused to acknowledge Ronaldo as the better player.

 

[Tomuś]

This sort of thing always happen. Same was the case with Rooney Ronaldo. Before we signed Rooney for many he was just a fat overhyped English kid. After his first year, many including some respected posters on here claimed Ronaldo was not even in the same league as Rooney and never will be. Even after 2006/7 season, plenty refused to acknowledge Ronaldo as the better player.

Wayne Rooney was a better footballer till 2005, 2006 at a stretch.

 

[KingEric7]

Rooney was amazing in 2006 (the first half at least, second half very poor by comparison), I miss the way he was then a lot. No doubt he's a lot better in some ways now but he'd be up there with Ronaldo had he kept all of what had made him special then. Watched a game from 05/06 not long ago and the difference in him then in terms of his explosiveness, first touch and immediate threat in possession is very noticeable.

 

[Arruda]

Come on Spoony! You have never seen Messi being kicked all over the pitch over 90 minutes then? The amount of fouls he has had to endure, and he still gets less protection that other players simply because of his own honest reputation of wanting to stay on his feet.

It's not exactly the same thing it was back then.

Pelé was brutally fouled several times against Bulgaria in WC '66, ended up injured and missed the game against Hungary. In the final and decisive group match Portugal used exactly the same tactics against him, no red cards given. Soon after the start of the game Pelé was limping again. And he finished the game, no substitutions were allowed back then.

Messi indeed has to skip some very though challenges and is brilliant at avoiding him, but I don't think it's in the same magnitude as it was in older times, if anything because most of those fouls would be straight reds today.

 

[RedLars]

This is a post from November 2008 on the Caf:

From this quote:



Came this response:



90 goals in just over 65 games plus another 25+ assists blows that particular quote out of the water. As for the Torres remark, how much is he regretting it now? The newbs were bad but hell, the mains had their fair share too.

I don't see what was so wrong with that? Disregarding the tone (and the Torres remark), he simply stated that if Messi was as productive as he has been it would be fair game to talk about him being one of the best of all time. Strange one to pull from the past to prove how hindsight is always 20-20.

 

[Pink Moon]

Is this the latest dig now? The tackling was worse back in the day? Big deal. I'm sure if Messi played back then he'd have dealt with it the same way the other greats did and would still have shown himself to be an incredible talent.

I never hear people bring up this point when jizzing over Ronaldo or Zidane.

 

[kietotheworld]

At the time the Torres remark was quite reasonable - Torres has shown himself to be the one of the best strikers in the world over the last year or so, Messi had enjoyed a good run of form in La Liga, but had suffered from injury problems while Torres' were yet to hit him.

While Messi's potential was obviously great, nobody sensible would have predicted he'd be as good as he is now, even the people who were saying he would be the best player of all time have had their expectations shattered - if someone had predicted on here that he'd score 47, 53 and 73 goals in the next 3 seasons and score 90 goals in 2012 they'd have been derided as a spastic. Almost equally surprising has been Torres' deterioration from arguably the best striker in the world to arguably the worst striker in the Premier League.

It's easy to look back now and laugh at it but at the time they weren't far apart.

 

[Fergus' son]

Exactly, each to their own. You argued until you were blue in the face about Ronaldo, I argued until I was blue in face about Messi. I have always respected your opinions so, please extend some common courtesy and respect mine for once. Have a nice evening Fergus.

Now you're making shit up, what exactly did I argue about Ronaldo til I 'was blue in the face'?

I genuinely want to know what you are referring to, because I have never said that Ronaldo is better than Messi.

Also, I am showing courtesy, stop playing the victim.