I think the level of player/Athlete now is far greater than what Diego came up against.
In terms of ability with the ball, their dribbling is almost identical but passing wise, Messi is a few levels above IMO.
Messi in Miami
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I think the level of player/Athlete now is far greater than what Diego came up against.
In terms of ability with the ball, their dribbling is almost identical but passing wise, Messi is a few levels above IMO.
1st bolded: Sure, but attackers are also far more protected now.
2nd bolded: I think that's an egregious take.
Messi’s along the ground through balls are probably the best the game has ever seen.
Seconded. I had a period where I was downloading and watching old matches, watching Diego from Argentinos Jrs to his exploits in the 86 World Cup, and his relationship with the ball, as you say, was exceptional. And his passing was absolutely astounding as well. The spin he’d put on the ball to make it favour the attacker rather than run in to the goalkeeper was ridiculous, his remarkable mastery of trivela, not to mention his more acrobatic offerings.
I love Messi, and I think it’s hard to deny his claim to being the GOAT, but Maradona was otherworldly in a different way. Messi does a lot of the simple stuff with incredible efficacy and makes it look spectacular (what with his dribbling not really being about 5 star moves), but Maradona made the spectacular look like it was the simplest thing for him. He deserves his mythical standing, IMO.
Maradona was Messi and Ronaldinho mixed in one player.
Not going to argue with anyone about who is the best ever but for me Maradona was the most skilled player I've ever seen.
Not going to argue with anyone about who is the best ever but for me Maradona was the most skilled player I've ever seen.
It gives me nostalgia from when I "discovered" him after some vid from his Rosario days and written article where people called him the next Diego in such a convincing way that woke up my curiosity. Later I watched him in these friendlies and the WC from the vid and I was instantly sold, I couldn't believe how good he was.
Not really that surprising though, is it? Not in a league where the median salary is only 240,000 pounds year. Most top players make that in a week or so in the big leagues. Messi going to MLS was always going to be about the exposure and marketing potential his presence bought, as much or more than it is about his footballing ability.
His base salary at Miami is 178,000 pounds a week, and up to 312,000 pounds a week with bonus etc. For Messi, that’s really not that much. Yes he gets $50m from Apple as part of the new streaming deal, which is worth more than double his salary (bonuses included), but if he’d gone to Saudi Arabia for example, I’m sure he could’ve made 10 or 15 times the base salary he is currently making. As evidenced by Ronaldo’s pay packet. And Messi is a bigger deal and at a considerably higher current performance level than Ronnie. By orders of magnitude.
I think the only shocking thing about that article, is how low the median salary still is in MLS, and how much Insigne is getting paid (70% of Messi’s salary, not including TV deal) while playing like absolute shit. In reality, the world at large gives zero fecks about MLS, evidenced by the fact it’s the 3rd or 4th most watched “soccer” league in its own country, behind foreign competitions. Messi is the first thing, in a long time, to give MLS any significant relevance not just internationally, but also in its own domestic market.
The disparity is the point. Not the total.
Messi hasn’t given MLS any significant relevance either. Yeah it’s great for US fans to see the greatest player in the world, but he’s not going to drive eyeballs to the league for the next decade.
Purely because he’s playing with players that make less than real leagues make in a fortnight.
Been great watching his retirement though. He’s done some great stuff over there.
I get that the disparity is the point. That’s obvious. My point was that the disparity is hardly even remotely surprising. And given who we are talking about, the salary numbers are very conservative.
As far as driving eyeballs for the next decade, that’s an assertion best directed at MLS executives, who presumably have a more holistic view of the longer term strategy. What’s clearly true is that his arrival was intended to pique interest in the league in a significant way. At that has already been accomplished with record television viewership numbers, attendances, and sponsorship deals league wide. How they plan to retain and grow that long term, I am not privy to. Yet, like Beckham’s arrival had a long lasting impact on MLS, I would not be surprised at all to see Messi’s have a similar lasting effect.
Growing a league is something best viewed over the very long term. It takes time. But the Messi arrival has demonstrably moved the needle, at least in the short term.
Add to that the upcoming WC and you might get to a tipping point.
Regarding that article on Messi's pay how does that TV deal work? Is that true what it says, he gets a proportion of the league's deal with Apple TV?
Sure it's all been talked about before when he joined, I don't really follow anythng besides the PL. How is that allowed and how didn't the other clubs kick off?
Ok, they maybe see that it helps grow the league but when the broadcaster is helping one club to the detriment of yours from a sporting perspective I don't see how they'd stand for it or how it would be seen as remotely fair or acceptable. Sky wanted to buy United and weren't allowed to, rightly so. Sky also couldn't give money to Salah to stay at Liverpool if he wanted to leave and go to Saudi in an attempt to retain subscribers, or pledge money to a potential Arsenal new signing to attract him to the league to boost subscribers. Would be highly illegal.
Of course players have sponsors and that, but I can't wrap my head round this. It's different the broadcaster helping lure a player to a team compared to a normal sponsorhip deal with Nike, Adidas or whatever.
Odd way to running a sporting competition. The TV company broadcasting it helping to shape which team is going to be good makes them owners of the club/league in a way.
Sure it's all been talked about before when he joined, I don't really follow anythng besides the PL. How is that allowed and how didn't the other clubs kick off?
Ok, they maybe see that it helps grow the league but when the broadcaster is helping one club to the detriment of yours from a sporting perspective I don't see how they'd stand for it or how it would be seen as remotely fair or acceptable. Sky wanted to buy United and weren't allowed to, rightly so. Sky also couldn't give money to Salah to stay at Liverpool if he wanted to leave and go to Saudi in an attempt to retain subscribers, or pledge money to a potential Arsenal new signing to attract him to the league to boost subscribers. Would be highly illegal.
Of course players have sponsors and that, but I can't wrap my head round this. It's different the broadcaster helping lure a player to a team compared to a normal sponsorhip deal with Nike, Adidas or whatever.
Odd way to running a sporting competition. The TV company broadcasting it helping to shape which team is going to be good makes them owners of the club/league in a way.
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Laudrup, Rui Costa, Riquelme and De Bruyne were or are better than him at that.
I can't imagine too many people will agree with that.
I don't think KDB is. Can't comment on Rui Costa or Riquelme. I dont think Messi is the best ever at it, but definitely in company with the best. Ozil and David Silva deserve a shout too. I think M. Laudrup is best ever passer though.
The thing with Messi though is he can easily skip past 3 or 4 players before making that perfect througball. Its part of the reason he makes it so aesthetic.
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Messi's vision and precision are perhaps up there(I think Laudrup and Riquelme's vision are unparalleled), but his range and weight of pass(maybe the two things are the same) are levels below. See, for example, how much faster De Bruyne's passes are compared to Messi's, and they still reach the receiver very smoothly. It's way harder to intercept those passes. Furthermore, until his time in PSG, almost all of his through balls(the low ones, at least) came from nearby the box(one can argue that he was a forward, unlike the other guys, but he started playing really deep in the field from 2015 onwards). Maybe if he had lost his athletics earlier he'd have developed his passing game to that level, but we can only consider his body of work, I guess.
Regarding Ozil, I consider him one of the most creative playmakers I've ever seen, but I think his chance creating skills had much more to do with smart off the ball movement, feints, antecipation and great touch than with elite passing execution.
Regarding Ozil, I consider him one of the most creative playmakers I've ever seen, but I think his chance creating skills had much more to do with smart off the ball movement, feints, antecipation and great touch than with elite passing execution.
Yeah, that's definitely the reason why.
Hard disagree. And I mean concrete.
I'm sorry but this is just absolute bollocks.
Regarding Messi's throughballs coming from edge of the box, do you remember this video from his 2012 season where his prolific goalscoring was all what caught the news?
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Well he did it twice with Napoli to begin with, and if you watched him in his prime you'd sing another tune.
I absolutely love Messi and there's no doubt in my mind that he's up there with the best footballers to ever grace a football pitch. Anyone putting him as the greatest of all time wouldn't have any complaint from me.
But seeing people trying to downplay what Maradona was and what he achieved is absolutely hilarious.
How to tell me you never watched Maradona without telling it.
It's just an opinion. I have watched most available Maradona games.
I wish I could've watched Diego in his prime. I think Messi's passing is exceptional, I didn't think that was something Diego possessed.
I've only watched a bunch of highlight reels unfortunately.
Pretty decent, but he's no Yamal.
Silly thing to say. I've watched both. I've found Messi to be the best passer I've ever seen.
Most of them are from nearby the box(there's a difference between nearby and on the edge), to be honest, and part of the others are not low passes or through very open defenses(in some cases, because Messi's previous dribbling).
Not really.
So did I.
Stating that Messi is a few levels above Maradona in terms of passing is pure insanity and reeks of recency bias. Both are exceptional playmakers with a vision and passing light-years ahead of anyone else.
The only thing that Messi has over Diego is consistency. Everything else is a (very tight) toss up.
I'm lucky enough to have watched both.
Maradona was my idol when I grew up and when he retired I thought that I'd never see anyone like him in my lifetime. Then came Messi.
People of this generation really fail to grasp the magnitude of Diego's talent and what he achieved at the time, despite his off-field antics and drugs addiction. People tend to associate him with dribbling and goals but he was, just like Messi, much, much more than that. If he played in this era with the support and protection on the pitch he never had in his time, he'd be worth £300-500M.
Here's a compilation of some of his passes:
They weren't but they were excellent too
I think Maradona was a genius. Serie A was obviously renowned for its defensive style.
But I still find it wild that Messi scored 73 goals during a single season at Barcelona. Maradona scored 115 goals across 7 seasons at Napoli.
Messi at the age of 24/25 was like a cheat code.
In general any statement that tries to established that in some atribute a player like Maradona or Messi is a step, a level or two above the other, it's quiet frankly wrong per se, at such off the charts level that doesn't exist, it would imply sthg. being astronomically better between them, becasue a step at such level it's a looooooooooot.
Yet ther are different approaches, more or less diff styles involved, a tad better sthg, sometimes even just a prefference "on the eye"
Yet ther are different approaches, more or less diff styles involved, a tad better sthg, sometimes even just a prefference "on the eye"
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Absolute genius at work by there.
In any case why such necesity to always try to find who is "better", almost every Elite player it's more a question of timing (regarding everything: teams involved, injuries, coaches, etc etc) and personal prefference. And in this cases of in my view "Geniuses" of this fecking game, I find that most of the times it ends in some absurd demerit of the Genius the particular person doesn't like or doesn't like as much as the other that it's his prefference.
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Your response their is fair. But you were saying you obviously you haven't watched Maradona. Nobody said anything about levels above. They're both the 2 best players ever but there was nothing Maradona was clearly better at than Messi
Yeah, no.
And I've watched and love all the players you mentioned, especially Laudrup.
The way Diego, Messi, Pele could split a a defense with a pass while at the same time dribbling, at THEIR pace, and doing it CONSTANTLY, it's deserve to very few players in the history of the game, others really close wereJohan, Best, Alfredo. That it's a very rare trait, because those had very rare physical atributes with a combination of vision, intelligence, balance and manage of time and space that it's really special. Does this take anything from Laudrup, Platini, Riquelme, Rui, Ozil, Zizou, Ardiles, Iniesta, Di Maria?, I can name tons of brilliant throught balls passers, nope...in fact some of them have done very beautiful ones, others from bigger distances than the more typical done by the aforementioned geniuses had done, but the mere ability to pull out what I've told at the beggining, it's reserve to the very few that where born that way with such an array and combination of atributes.
The other day I was talking about sthg similar in the Yamal thread were many seem to not entirely grasp what is to be born with the conditions specially the three first mentioned were born and how this ends portraiting in their game style specially when being young.
A little rant.
From 2016 to 2021, I was known as a massive Messi stan on the football forums of my country. I find it insane how a lot of people really thought that CR7 was a better player at that time(that wasn't even the best version of himself) or how Messi's 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons were bad, when they were some of the best seasons a player has ever had(16-17 was arguably the most impressive season from Messi regarding dribbling); even in 2018-2019, when he got the general acclaim, there were tons of people who thought he didn't deserve the Ballon d'Or(how can someone think that a CB was better than Messi in one of his best season still a mistery to me). I don't even think 2021, which is probably his most controvertial win(bar the last one; a joke, indeed), is contestable. But after WC22, he became very overrated. He became the absolute best of all time in every offensive facet of the game, and people will get offended as if a member of their family were being defamed if you disagree. It's the big sport in the world, with more than a century of history, more than hundreds world class players, and Messi has to be not only the best of all time, but the best at everything related to having a ball at your feet.
Thanks for your time.
From 2016 to 2021, I was known as a massive Messi stan on the football forums of my country. I find it insane how a lot of people really thought that CR7 was a better player at that time(that wasn't even the best version of himself) or how Messi's 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons were bad, when they were some of the best seasons a player has ever had(16-17 was arguably the most impressive season from Messi regarding dribbling); even in 2018-2019, when he got the general acclaim, there were tons of people who thought he didn't deserve the Ballon d'Or(how can someone think that a CB was better than Messi in one of his best season still a mistery to me). I don't even think 2021, which is probably his most controvertial win(bar the last one; a joke, indeed), is contestable. But after WC22, he became very overrated. He became the absolute best of all time in every offensive facet of the game, and people will get offended as if a member of their family were being defamed if you disagree. It's the big sport in the world, with more than a century of history, more than hundreds world class players, and Messi has to be not only the best of all time, but the best at everything related to having a ball at your feet.
Thanks for your time.
Anyone coming with stats to prove a point and compare radically different football eras isn't worth a serious conversation.
I've given up arguing across eras. Maradona was the best player of the 80s. Messi is the best player of the 21st century, or the last decade at least. Messi v Ronaldo is a fair debate, because they are dealing with the same circumstances. Maradona v Platini is a fair debate because they were dealing with the same circumstances. Messi v Maradona is not a logical debate. Football in Messi's time is completely different from what it was when Diego was playing. The whole world was completely different.
