That's interesting, because by your own metric (the club rankings) there are 12 teams in the top 120 clubs from France compared to 3 for Portugal and 4 for Holland.
Nordic Ghost Yeti (Scandi Carroll) | Haaland at City
- Thread starter Samid
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3 seasons is a pretty small sample size
Here's the stats breakdown.
Peak Messi G+A every 50 Minutes
Current Haaland G+A every 59 Minutes
Current Messi G+ A every 79 Minutes including world cup. (Caveat of playing in french league)
Also not sure who has more penalties. Probably Messi with the world cup....
Peak Messi G+A every 50 Minutes
Current Haaland G+A every 59 Minutes
Current Messi G+ A every 79 Minutes including world cup. (Caveat of playing in french league)
Also not sure who has more penalties. Probably Messi with the world cup....
12 in the top 121. Heh. I mean, there are 9 teams in the top 133 for Portugal and 8 in the top 126 for the Dutch. France have slightly more European minnows, sure, but Portugal and Netherlands have more teams closer to each other at the top of the table and who are capable of competing with each other on a regular basis.
Like I said, it's close between these three, but I'd give the edge to the Dutch based on their recent European performances and the fact that there's a more equitable distribution of points between the clubs.
Edit: This is going way off topic isn't it.
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So even though the French have way more teams that the other 2 in the top 100, 120, 130, 140, whatever you want to call it, you'd give the edge to the Dutch. Got it.
He actually didn't have an amazing World Cup, he was average for pretty much all of it and then scored a hat-trick in the final. He was also completely quiet until the 60th minute in the final (like most of the French team) and benefitted from the injection of pace that Muani and Coman brought on.
Yup, Haaland getting the same or better scoring rate is incredible, Messi was entertainment+ efficiency.
Argentina were the better side in every game they played and Messi was the best player on the pitch in those games. All the wins for Argentina and Messi's individual honours were well deserved and cannot simply be attributed to luck.
Messi's game goes much beyond stats (even if they are phenomenal) so brilliant is the rest of his game.
By that metric he is one of the best but not the outright best.
Besides he was not the best player on the pitch in that game, Di Maria was and that is despite his hattrick.
Unstoppable. Someone here was saying he isn't as good as RvN. 
I would say Messi was an all time great playmaker + dribbler + goalscorer + scorer of great goals rolled in one.
Haaland is an all-time great goalscorer.
Yes because as a counterweight the other two have had more recent, more equitable and more overall success in European competition and also those other two leagues have more equitable competition towards the top end of the ranking.
It's a toss up but yeah, I prefer the Dutch by a hair.
I personally don't think there is much logic to your stance (the coefficient and the club coefficients both tell you the answer) but you're entitled to your opinion
Even though what you've described on Messi is correct. I think you (and some of people here) have downplayed Haaland bit by labelling him nothing more than goalscorer. For example, I think Haaland has one of the best physicality/physical presence out of all footballers I've ever seen, the way he bully defenders by his sheer strength and pace is quite unmatched and I think those also deserved recognition.
Yeah it's ridiculous, firstly his two best moments of the tournament were not goals, but assists - an incredible assist against Netherlands through the eye of a needle and where he tore Gvardiol, the best defender in the tournament at that point, a new one to set up an easy goal against Croatia. And then his next best moment of the tournament was a brilliant shot against Mexico from distance into the corner with Argentina sleepwalking towards exiting the tournament. It was only then that moment from nothing that Argentina settled down and started playing a bit of football. None of these moments had anything to do with penalties.
People insist on calling him a poacher. Bizarre.
I call him the anti-Wout.
No he wasn't, he was brilliant against Denmark and Poland. He was good against Australia. He was average against England and Morocco. He was brilliant against Argentina. So he was brilliant in half of his games. The first 60 minutes don't matter when you score a hat-trick in the rest of the game.
I appreciated Haaland as a great goal scorer with incredible physical attributes, but isn't he a poacher? From what I see in the highlight he is the final touch of the attack and put the ball into the net most of the time with just one touch, and he is extremely good at that.
I mean.. for most people that alone would equal an amazing world cup but I have no idea what your standards would be if that isn't it.
He is a great goalscorer (may gone to be the greatest ever goalscorer). That is not not downplaying or insulting him. He himself doesn't pretend otherwise. His attributes include pace, strength, and anticipation. If he maintains his numbers for a long time, he will go down as an alltime great.
The only things keeping him away from record shattering numbers are injuries and playing in a team that isn't as dominant as City where he has to contribute beyond scoring.
He is, mostly. See his five goals vs Leipzig.
Sorry yeah he was brilliant against Poland, and he was good against Denmark and Australia, but several levels below Griezmann who was France's star until the final (and the mystery virus).
The 60 minutes "don't matter", sure, but they existed, and when we're assessing the overall performance, I feel it's worthy of discussion - even moreso that 2 of his goals were pens.
No, a hat trick in a final wouldn't equate to an amazing world cup for anyone, it's not a question of standards. The same way Zidane's brace in the 98 final did not mean he had a good tournament (it was overall poor in fact).
In any more or less meaningful sense of the term - yes, of course he is.
But this is modern football fandom. When he occasionally hits a teammate with a pass, and that teammate scores a goal, that will be taken as proof that he's a playmaker (too), etc.
As you have already conceeded he was also excellent in a number of other games in the competition. He clearly was one of the best players in the world cup. This really isn't debatable.
This is a good example.
Let's say Haaland manages -eventually- to reduce his W+A to less than 50 minutes. By the logic used by some, it would mean that Haaland's peak is better than Messi's. And that would be a tremendous fallacy.
As I said, Haaland is the best goalscorer in the world and he will be for the next few years except for injuries, but his game depends a lot on the service they give him and right now, he is in the best team for this, full of assisters and passers of the highest level . It is not not giving him credit, it is simply mentioning that it is not enough to be considered the best player in the world, for a reason there are categories and in this case, he fits perfectly in the best of his position: the best scorer in the world.
On the other hand, the media, meme pages and football in general hype the numbers so much that they put aside any hint of analysis beyond simply the goals. At least now they include assists, they realized they also counted it seems.
Why is Messi brought into every conversation? It got really boring v Ronaldo conversations, let’s not do Messi v Haaland as well
i’ve always thought geebs has a way to go before he could be considered as good of an admin as messi.
I simply think the ability to bully defenders with pace+strength, in terms of actual impact to the game, is no less than dribbling past defenders with skills and ball control. Its just the way of how you put it.
Agreed
That is true but for all his size and power and finishing ability, he typically doesn't touch the ball that much during games (especially for City, it was a bit different at Dortmund). He is therefore reliant on other people creating for him and he is not someone who can regularly affect the game without scoring. Fortunately, the games where he doesn't score are few and far between but they do exist. And when they come along or he has a little slump, he usually gets slated on forums like this for being 'in Shaw's pocket' or whatever.
The second leg is where it gets scary now for Bayern. If they try and flip the result, they'll have to commit men forward with this monster on the counter attack.
Well I think what matter most is, he is scoring insane number of goals everywhere, for whatever team he plays for - City, Dortmund, Salzburg, Norway. And he bullies defenders at all levels with his unmatched pace+strength+physcality. That to me is a perfect no.9 or attacker. I don't really care if people think he is only a poacher, can't do dribbling or stepovers, and relies heavily on supply from his teammates. He is simply the best in the game right now, truth is no one does their job better than him on the football pitch, not even close, so thats all it matters.
Because he is. What i find bizarre is this weird notion that poacher means touching the ball 3 times per game, scoring a tap in and otherwise standing around doing nothing...
It would though. After the France World Cup they beamed that massive image of Zidane's face onto the Arc de Triomphe or wherever it was. Geoff Hurst has been living off a hatty in the world Cup final for 60 years. He scored one other goal in that tournament FFS. There's literally nothing else he's ever done that the average person could pinpoint. The World Cup final is so historically important that scoring multiple goals in it essentially equates to a great tournament. In any case it's immaterial because Mbappe scored 8 goals so I'm not sure how you can even begin to claim that he didn't have a great tournament.
A player that just scores goals is never going to be a better footballer than a player who scores and makes goals. That's football 101. No one ever thought Jimmy Greaves was better than George Best.
Well, that is ridiculous considering scoring goals is the most difficult part of the game. So you think Maddison is better than Haaland because he both scores and assists?
Well that's a very old school way of thinking. Its about time we give credits where credits due rather than relying on first pages of football 101.
Maybe scoring 5 and assist 5 looks more all impressive than just scoring 10 in traditional sense of an all round footballer. But scoring 20 is definitely better than scoring 5 and assist 5. Its just maths in the most simplified sense.
That's an hyperbole.
Mbappe was very good in the world cup, saying he was average is an hyperbole, not everything is black and white.
WC is more about moments than whole game, cause matches are very tense and tight.
I believe Griezmann was best french player in the WC overall, but saying Mbappe was average is a huge hyperbole.
Zidane in France 98 was included in team of the tournament.
And the team is chose before final btw, not after it.
He actually did have a very good tournament without being stellar, Thuram was best France player, but Zidane in fact had a good WC overall.
Ties already over no matter what Bayern do.